


Madhouse

by sigdom



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-18 03:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14203983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigdom/pseuds/sigdom
Summary: With the excuse of taking care of his brother, Lovino has to move to his eccentric grandfather's house in Spain, where he will have to deal with the inhabitants of the place and situations he didn't expect.





	1. Arrivederci, Roma

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Una casa de locos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13825689) by [sigdom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigdom/pseuds/sigdom). 



> Hetalia and his characters belong to Hidekazu Himaruya.  
> English is not my mother tongue, so please forgive me if you see any mistake.

**MADHOUSE**

 

_Chapter 1: Arrivederci, Roma_

Mediterranean Sea spread like a big blue blanket hundreds of kilometers below me and I watched it from the window doing everything possible to ignore the annoying noises from the idiot that was sat next to me, who wasn’t other that my stupid little brother, Feliciano; it was his fault that I was stuck in that damn can of sardines, commonly called airplane, with another two hundred people with destination to Spain.

And why do I say it’s stupid Feliciano’s fault? Because it is, that simple. Everything that damn idiot does ends up affecting me in some way and this time wasn’t going to be different. And it’s that the idiot had no other better idea than moving to Spain with our grandfather after finishing high school and continuing there with his studies and, of course, he had dragged me with him…

Okay, it hadn’t been him really, at least not directly, but my _darling_ and _beloved_ mother…

The day Feliciano dropped the bomb I was comfortably lied down on the sofa while enjoying the tranquility of having nothing to do (benefits of being fired by your stupid boss for _kindly making the clients of his restaurant hurry up_ so I could take their order) when I saw him approaching to me jumping and with a stupid face that was brimming over with happiness.

“Ve~ _fratello_ , I have something to tell you …”

Feliciano always has something to tell me, from the biggest stupidity in the world such as he has seen a cat with a curl just like his in the street to the things he considers more important such as mom has scolded him for a decrease in his grades. And, because of that smile on his face, surely it was some stupidity such as that night we would have his favorite pasta dish.

“Speak, idiot” I told him in a bad way, I wanted to recover the damn tranquility he disturbed with his presence, “what happens to you now?”

“Come on, Feli, honey” my mother said coming into the room with my father. Great, an unexpected fucking family reunion, “you can tell us that important thing. You” she pointed at me with her finger and pushed me to the side of the sofa, “sit properly!”

I puffed my cheeks and moved away to a corner of the couch, leaving room for my parents to sit down. I would have gone to my bedroom, but I wanted to know what was that Feliciano had to tell us to get everybody together, just out of curiosity, seriously, not because I was really interested.

That idiot of Feliciano was standing there in front of us three shaking like a leaf, why the hell was he so nervous? It had to be something very big, maybe something for what he would be scolded and due to that he was trembling, but knowing my parents’ attitude toward my brother in the end they would give him all their support. Yes, all the support they denied me when I intended to do anything.

And then he announced the news. There was silent. I was looking at him dumbfounded; he has always been a damn coward, if he still gets into my bed at night when he’s scared! Where did he get the courage to embark on an adventure of such magnitude alone? Well, okay, he won’t be completely alone, he will be with our grandpa… which is practically the same as being alone.

My mother, who was initially in shock, started a round of shouts, she took her time; how could she let her adorable and innocent kid go to a distant country with an irresponsible old man and womanizer? Who knows how would be his lifestyle! Her little one would certainly become corrupted.

With a light smile on my lips I listened to my mother ranting on about her father-in-law and scolding my brother, who had already started crying although he didn’t seem willing to retract his decision despite he was very afraid of mom. For me, it was rather satisfactory that, for a change, my mother’s shouts weren’t for me. But, of course, if I think about it sooner, it will happen sooner.

“LOVINO!” she shouted at me as if her life depended on it, what the hell did I do? “This is your fault!”

“Fuck. And why is it my fault that this idiot wants to leave?” I said angrily, frowning, puffing my cheeks and standing up.

“Because I’m sure you do know this! Feliciano tells you everything, I’m sure you’ve kept quiet so we can’t do anything.”

I was getting more and more angry, I had no idea of my idiot brother’s plans, I had just found out like everyone else. But before I could answer back, Feliciano ran to me and hugged me, rubbing his wet cheek against mine (agh, how disgusting!).

“My _fratello_ didn’t know anything!” he defended me, still crying. “The only one who knew it was grandpa, he phoned to congratulate me for finishing high school and was the one who suggested it to me.”

The answer of that idiot gave my mother a new reason to hate her father-in-law more. I’m sure that if he had proposed it to me my mother wouldn’t have hesitated to pack my things and send me on the very first flight to Spain, besides praising my grandfather and putting him on a pedestal.

And now I was thinking about it… why grandpa hadn’t suggested to me something similar when he phoned me for the same reason last year? I guess the answer is clear: because of Feliciano. Our appearance is very similar, but not our character. Feliciano is the kindest, the friendliest, friend of everybody, the one who has talent, cooks the best, cleans the best, doesn’t get in trouble… And I… I’m just useless compared to him, the lonely, bad-tempered, grumpy and foul-mouthed older brother good for nothing.

My mother’s anger took me out of my thoughts, she came to us in a rage and looked like she was about to fume. She was fucking close. Without thinking, I tightly hugged that idiot who had caused that disaster and who was sobbing between my arms, we were both scared shitless.

“If Feli is sure about it, there’s nothing else to discuss” my father said for the first time in the evening, I had almost forgotten about his presence.

 “HOW THE HELL CAN YOU SAY THAT?” my mother spat adressing all of her Italian fury towards him. “Feliciano it’s not even able of defending himself, how do you expect he can manage alone in a foreign country? I WON’T PERMIT IT!"

“He won’t be alone, my father will take care of him.”

“What a relief!” she said sarcastically. “He’s nothing more than an irresponsible old man and a womanizer, you know all those stories about him. AND I DO NOT TRUST HIM! So I refuse to let my little boy go alone with him."

There’s nobody who makes this woman sees sense, not even my patient father.

She turned towards us again. Feliciano clung tightly to my neck, that fool was choking me! And then I saw it, a sparkle shone in my mother’s amber eyes and the creepy expression on her face changed to a more relaxed one.

“Maybe I would worry less if Lovino went with him.”

Feliciano relaxed his grip and, wide-eyed, looked alternatively to my mother and me. A stupid smile spread on his damn face and he started jumping around me with that foolish face he puts when he’s happier.

 “ _Fratello_ ~ ~”

I was in shock. WHAT? I felt great in Italy, why would I have to move to another stupid country, and what’s more, with my idiot brother?

“NO, I REFUSE!” I shouted getting out of my trance. “I WON’T LEAVE!”

“Yes, you will. You’ll go with your brother and take care of him.”

“NO WAY!”

“Think about it as a chance” my father said, “so that you can make up your mind about what you want to do with your life. What’s the problem? You don’t have a job, neither friends nor a girlfriend to leave behind.”

Oh no, that’s all I needed, that my idiot father supported my mother’s idea and was against me, and what’s more, he touched a raw nerve reminding me how pathetic my life is.

“I’M NOT GONNA LEAVE, FUCK!”

“Look, Lovino” my mother’s look darkened and half smiled making my blood ran cold, “I give you two options: or you move to Spain and take care of your brother…”

“NO!” I answered with tears in my eyes that, because of my pride, I wouldn’t let fall and least in front of my mother.

“…or you  leave home.”

I froze. Feliciano stopped his stupid dance all of a sudden and looked at me with fear. That woman wasn’t talking for talking’s sake, she would really throw me out of our house.

At last after 19 years she had found the perfect excuse to get rid of me. Why? Because she hates me. Yes, she hates me, it’s nothing new, she has hated me since the moment I appeared in her damn life with the only purpose of screwing it up and making her lose all her youth, according to her. Sure, and I was too the one who makes her spread her legs in front of my father at the first opportunity. Obviously, I wasn’t going to spit her that despite I wish to, because of the punch my father would give me I’d end up as stupid as Feliciano or more, and because of the one my mother would give me she would kill me and I still appreciate my life a bit, even if it’s pathetic.

“So? What do you decide?”

“I move to Spain with Feliciano and grandfather” I said resigned.

My mother smirked, she had managed to get rid of me at last, and left the room with my father.

I stayed with Feliciano, who was jumping again with a dumb face, and went towards the phone to call grandpa. I, letting my rage out, ran towards him and tried to kill him with the phone cable for having gotten me into that mess.

 

I don’t know how our grandfather reacted when idiot Feliciano told him I was included in the pack too, but I don’t give a fuck.

The only good thing about all of this is that I have gotten rid of my parents, who I didn’t intend to say goodbye, they have thrown me out of my house and exiled me too, they shouldn’t expect I show any affection for them.  But my mother, despite she hates me, didn’t let me go without giving me some kisses on the cheeks and some advices.

“Don’t get in trouble…”

It’s not like I look for problems, they find me some way.

“Take care of your brother…”

I’ll watch him close as much, but I don’t intend to stick to him like a limpet.

“Be careful not to get a girl pregnant…”

I don’t plan to be the third generation which makes the same mistake.

“And pay attention to what your grandfather tells you, try not to give him many headaches.”

Now she’s gonna worry about my grandpa after rating on about him, she couldn’t be more hypocritical in this world.

I left my parents hugging Feliciano for the last time in a long while and I went to pass the police control. I don’t know if those useless policemen thought I was part of the mafia or something, but the imbecile searched me from top to bottom as if I were a fucking criminal, I don’t know how I didn’t end up with a probe up my… what a great way to begin this damn journey.

From the window of the plane, I could see how Italy, my beloved home, was left behind. I felt sad (although I will never admit it in front of anybody).

“Ve~~ _Fratello_ , what’s wrong? Are you dizzy? Does your stomach hurt? Are you hungry?”

I’m lucky that Feliciano is stupid and doesn’t realize anything.

“Yes, I’m hungry” I lied, “besides airplane’s food is so disgusting that seems to be made by an Englishman, it’s not even served on time.”

“Veee~”

I don’t know what awaits me in Spain, I only wish that whatever has to come is better than what I leave behind.


	2. A guitar at night

_Chapter 2: A guitar at night_

Grandpa was waiting for us at the airport. It wasn't difficult to find him among so many people, after all he is a guy who stands out not only because of his height, but also because of his stylish dressing, like every good Italian.

" _Nonno_!"

"Feliciano!"

Feliciano dropped his luggage and ran towards grandpa in a very little manly way, he was received with a strong hug. I approached them slowly, very embarrassed, those two were making a scene and the people around stared at them.

"Lovino~!"

The damn old man rushed at me and squashed me between his strong and big arms. I tried to escape of his grip, complaining, but he had a stronger subjection power than Feliciano's. It runs in the family!

I didn't know if grandpa's house would be far away from the airport, but it was or not, I'd take a nap in the way. Or so I had wanted.

"So tell me, boys, how are your parents?"

I had forgotten… grandpa doesn't stop talking once he starts.

"As always." I answered to see if he stopped talking soon. "Dad is busy with his job and mom still hates you. Now even more if that can be possible.

" _Fratello!_ " Feliciano scolded me from behind.

"Hahaha, she wouldn't be my beloved daughter-in-law if she showed any kind of sympathy towards me, hahaha…" the old man laughed, it seems that he didn't mind to be in my mother's black list. "And what about you? Is there any  _bella ragazza_  who has stolen your heart?"

"No…"

"Do you think that if I had had a girlfriend in Italy I would have agreed to move here so easily?" How the hell could he ask so obvious things?

"Ve~, but,  _fratello_ , if you practically have been forc…"

"SHUT UP!" I shouted.

That idiot cringed with fear. He was about to screw it up. Although it was true that I was in this damn country because I couldn't help it ―that or the street―, I didn't want my grandfather to know it.

"Calm down, boys. So, Lovino, do you know what you are going to do with your life from now on?"

What's that question in aid of? Wasn't it supposed that moving to grandpa's house would help me to decide about that? Why does he ask me if I ALREADY know what I'm going to do? Obviously no, I'm as lost in this country I HAVE JUST ARRIVED as I was in Italy.

"No."

"But you'll have something in your mind, won't you?"

I looked at him frowning, I was getting angry.

"No."

"And how are you doing with the violin?" he changed the topic.

One moment, violin? What violin? Ah yes, I played violin, it was the only thing I did better than Feliciano… but I gave it up four years ago, specifically because my parents didn't come to my school recital. I got so pissed off that I sold the instrument, luckily I got a good amount, enough to buy a vespa… My vespa… that wonderful means of transport which let me go from one place to another in the city making me avoid those horrible buses and full of people undergrounds. Who knows which its destiny would be in my mother's hands… Ugh!

"Lovino… Lovino…" grandpa pulled me out of my sad thoughts about my motorbike. I looked at him "how are you doing with the violin."

"I'm not doing. I gave it up years ago."

"WHAT?!" he made a sharp turn and entered in the contrary lane for seconds in which I thought we'd  _kiss_  the car that came towards us. "And can I know why you gave it up?"

"Because I was really piss… because I was sick of it"

I wasn't going to admit in front of my grandfather that I stopped doing the only thing I was really good at because I felt hurt with my parents.

"I can't understand how your mother could permit it. Letting a talent like yours get lost that way can't be forgiven…" I blushed lightly due to his comments, I wasn't used to receive compliments.

In half and hour more or less, we reached our destination, a three floor building that looked ancient in the center of the city. The entire building was property of my grandfather.

"Well, boys, welcome home!"

He opened the gigantic main door and we went into a small hall with another door made of wrought iron and glass, which led to… a patio! But what the hell?!

Loaded down with our heavy luggage, we crossed that patio following grandpa to reach a stairs which a beautiful green-eyed girl with long brown hair was walking down with… a frying-pan in her hand?

"Hi, Romu" she greeted cheerfully. Why the fuck was she so familiar? And more important, if it was supposed my grandfather was the owner of the entire building, what was that beauty doing there?

_"Ciao, bella,_ who were you settling scores with?"

"Who do you think? With the same two as always, they were starting to plan misdeeds for this evening. Are these your grandsons?" she looked at us smiling. "So cute!"

"Feliciano and Lovino" he introduced us. "She's the tenant of the low floor, she's from Hungary."

She gave us a pair of kisses to each one as a greeting, to grandpa too so he didn't get jealous, and she continued her way downstairs swinging the frying pan in her hand while singing.

"She's a beautiful girl and very kind" grandpa commented, "but try to be discreet and not to be seen doing something indecent if you don't want to receive a hit with the pan" he touched the back of his neck making a gesture of pain.

We continued going up. Fuck! How heavy was our luggage!

Grandfather stopped on the first floor landing. I dropped all my load on the floor. We had already arrived, hadn't we? I was wrong. In front of us, lying on the floor, a blond with shoulder-length hair and another guy who looked like an albino rubbed a bump in each one heads.

"That hasn't been awesome on the part of lady  _tomboy_."

"Don't talk about her so loud because she's able to hear you and come back with a second round" the blond has a French accent.

The two idiots realized of our presence in front of them and got up in a theatrical way.

"What have you done this time to receive Eli's caresses?"

"Romu,  _mon ami._ " Another one too familiar with my grandfather. "But if it hasn't been anything, that girl sees things where there is nothing, we only commented our possible destinations to go out and drink this evening."

"In fact, my awesome self took the trouble to invite her to come with us. And that tomboy hit me with her frying-pan instead of giving me an answer!"

"Who knows what you have proposed to her!" grandpa laughed.

The Frenchman come to me and Feliciano and put an arm over our shoulders. The albino approached too but stayed beside my brother.

"But tell me,  _mon ami_  Romu, are these two beautiful cherubs your beloved grandsons?"

The Frenchman looked at me with lust and caressed my face with the back of his finger. A shiver ran through my entire body.

"CHIGIIIII!"

I ran to hide behind my grandfather. That idiot of Feliciano stayed smiling stupidly beside that pervert and his white-haired friend.

"Are you kicking up a row again?" complained a tall, blond and very muscular guy who came to the landing, angry.

"WHAT IS A DAMN GERMAN DOING HERE?" I shouted pointing at him. No, I don't like Germans, they're tall, blond and squared, not only in body but also in mind, and they're frightening… I mean... there are imposing! I'm not afraid of anything.

"Hey, boy, keep it polite" the albino spat me, was he German too?

"Oh, Mister Vargas, it's you. I thought my brother was kicking up a row again." Brother? The blond was the albino's brother? If they don't look alike.

"No, Ludwig! I was introducing my grandsons to Gilbert and Francis. This one of here" he took me out from his back "is the eldest, Lovino, and the one who is with your brother and Francis is Feliciano."

"Nice to meet you." The German said.

"Hey, Feli" the albino took too many liberties very quickly, "do you want me to show you the most awesome thing I have?"

"Veeee~"

"Damn perverted bastard! Don't talk filth to my brother!"

"I'm talking about my fantastic little chick, Gilbird!"

"Vee~, is it true you have a chick?"

"Maybe in other moment" grandpa pipped in, "those boys should arrive home first and leave their things."

Thank God grandpa recovered the little sense he has, I couldn't stand anymore being in the presence of those two damn Germans and that perverted Frenchman.

Another flight, where the hell was grandpa's house supposed to be?

"Don't leave me in the lurch, Gov, I need you to take me to work."

"Use public transport like everybody else. You are given to bad habits due to that damn Spaniard."

A couple of blonds arguing that went quiet when we appeared. She, very beautiful, with short and curly hair and emerald eyes, and he… another muscular giant, with a scar in his forehead like Harry Potter and with a strange hairstyle in shape of… a tulip?

" _Ciao_ , how are you, guys?"

"What's up?" the blond guy said curtly.

"Hi, Romu" the girl greeted with a beautiful cat smile. "Here I am trying my brother takes me to work."

"Aren't you going with Antonio today?"

"He changed his shift, he has to work in a wedding today."

The blond guy snorted, it seemed that he didn't like the topic of the conversation.

"Don't tell me these two handsome boys are Feliciano and Lovino!"

"We look alike, don't we?" grandpa joined his face with ours smiling. I frowned and rolled my eyes.

"If they look more like your sons than your grandsons!" it's not surprising that someone says that, my grandfather had children, well only one that I know, when he was very young (later my father followed his example), he is not even sixty! In fact, more than once grandpa has passed himself off as our father, which he loves, especially if there are females involved.

"I think so too. Hera~, hera~" stupid laugh and ego increase of the old man mode on.

The blond rolled his eyes and went downstairs, running away from the girl.

"Govert!... Excuse me, I have to go, nice to meet you!... Govert! You're not gonna run away, I need you to take me!"

The blonde disappeared downstairs following her brother.

"They are Govert and Emma." grandpa explained. "He is a bit weird" it wasn't necessary to mention it, "but is a good guy. And she is a ray of sun and makes a chocolate… delicious!"

We went up a new flight of stairs and apparently the last, at last!

"Welcome to your new home!"

Grandpa made us go to his house, which took up the entire third floor, and led us to our rooms. I fell onto my new bed and I would gladly have taken the well-deserved nap my body asked for, but I had more than one question in my mind that needed an answer.

"Grandpa…" I told him sitting up.

"Tell me, Lovino."

"If it's supposed the entire building is yours, why the hell had you the  _brilliant_  idea of coming to live in a third floor WITHOUT A LIFT?"

"Because it has more light, better views and because going up stairs is a good exercise to strengthen the heart and legs!"

What shitty reasons are those? I would have thrown the whole building and built a manor house in the middle of the city.

"And can I know why the hell you have two fucking Germans living here? And why the whole building seems like a damn UN headquarters? Fuck, I didn't see so many people from different nationalities since the day mom forced us to visit Vatican City. Where the hell have you taken them from?"

"Most of them came here as Erasmus and then they decided to stay here. I only rented the apartments, Antonio convinced me to do it, with those puppy eyes he puts is impossible to say no. Although no doubt it's one of the best ideas I have been given. Anything else you want to know?"

I shook my head. Grandpa smiled at me and ruffled my hair despite my complaints before leaving and closing the door.

I didn't even bother to unpack my luggage, I'd have time later. I fell onto the pillow again and succumbed to fatigue.

* * *

I woke up in the middle of the night. My nap got longer than expected, it was two in the morning. I heard noises in the patio. I looked out of the window, the moonlight lit everything and I could see how a tall figure crossed the patio with stealth. I couldn't see his face.

I decided to stay there a little longer. The soft summer breeze caressed my face, it was quite pleasant. Maybe moving to Spain hadn't been such a bad idea.

I began to feel sleepy. I could have spent six hours sleeping, but what could I do? I had a lack of sleep! The damn trip had me on my nerves the last few days, I couldn't help it.

I lay down between the sheets ready to sleep again when the sound of a guitar reached my ears and woke me up a bit. Who the hell is the moron bastard that plays a guitar at two o'clock in the night? I went back to the window and scanned the entire patio, the lights in all the apartments were off, was a guitar being played in the dark?

I went back to bed, the music started to relax me. I would complaint about it with my grandfather in the morning.

* * *

I got up at one o'clock in the noon. Feliciano, incredible as it may seem, was up. Sleeping a lot is one of the few things we have in common!

"Vee~ Good morning,  _fratello_ , have you slept well?"

"More or less." I answered while registering the fridge.

"Don't eat anything now, Lovino, lunch will be soon" grandpa scolded me.

I closed the fridge angrily and went to the living-room. The bell rang.

_"_ _Bonjour_ _, mon_ _petit cher._ " the perverted Frenchman greeted and came in. I stayed paralyzed for some seconds and when I was going to yell at him to get out of there, the open door hit me from behind and I fell to the ground.

"Dammit!" I complained. I looked towards the door, the blond with tulip head looked at me with boredom and went inside without even saying hello, what a nerve had the bastard!

"Hello~!" Emma greeted cheerfully. "What are you doing on the ground?"

"Eh… so… I…" I'm the eloquence in person. She held out her hand to me. "And you…? Well… you all, what are you doing here?"

"Don't you know?"

The door hit me again, but this time I didn't fall to the ground.

"The awesome presence this house needed has just arrived !" the idiot albino had opened the door wide open and had stayed under the doorframe in a victory's pose holding a pair of beer's packs on each hand which were held over his head, why gravity didn't act and they fell on him?

"Come on, awesome presence, go inside right now." Elizaveta, from behind him, gave him a kick in the ass pushing him inside. This time, instead of a frying pan, she carried two big platters in her arms.

"Romu!" the albino shouted, going inside followed by the brunette. "Look what the most awesome of your tenants has brought to you!"

Starting to get angry, I was about to close the door. One foot stoppedme. Specifically the foot of the bastard brother of the egotist, why do Germans have to come to MY HOUSE? He also brought two pair of platters in his gigantic and muscular arms.

"What the hell do you come to my house for, macho potato?" it was the first insult that came out, in Germany beside sausages many potatoes are eaten, ok?

"Hello." he said a little flushed and followed his brother.

After checking no more intruders were coming, I slam the door shut. Emma and I entered the dining room, the table was already set. I didn't understand anything, what were all those people there?

"Grandpa, why are all your tenants here?" I asked in a low voice.

"We get together every Sunday to have lunch and have a good time. Sometimes we take the opportunity to discuss the issues of the building, such as a neighbors board. Every week the tenant of a different flat has to prepare lunch, that way we taste typical food of each country." That makes me suspicious. "Our turn is next week! Come on, let's sit."

I forgot, my grandfather likes to celebrate parties and gather friends, he could be the next protagonist in any Christmas spot.

He led me to the table, making me sit between him and Emma, sit next to the tulip-head giant. In front of me was sit Feliciano, next to the macho potato!, the Frenchy, Eli and, in front of my grandfather, the macho albino. Now we were all gathered together I remembered the guitar of the previous night.

"Who was the idiot that played guitar last night in the small hours?"

"Guitar?" my brother said. I'm not surprised he didn't hear it, when he is asleep not even a bomb could wake him up.

"It probably was  _mon ami_  Antonio."

"He would be happy" the albino said.

"Or sad" the Frenchman added.

"Or drunk" the tulip-head said with contempt.

"Do you think he went to drink without us, his awesome friends? How he dares?!

They opened the lunch boxes on the table. Oh no, German food! Sausages and potatoes. All the hunger I had, which was a lot because I didn't eat since the day before in the airplane, vanished suddenly… or that I'd have wished because for nothing in the world I would try that infernal food.

"By the way" my grandfather said while he was helping himself, "talking about Antonio, wasn't it supposed that today was his turn to prepare food? I wanted to eat a dish of his fantastic paella, present company excepted, for the record."

"Yes, it was his turn," the white-haired answered, "but last Friday he asked us to change the turn because he had been called to work today. Obviously my awesome self couldn't refuse that kind of request."

"That poor boy is going to end up ill from working so much."

"But you already know his philosophy," Emma said, "water has to be collected when it rains."

"What a shitty philosophy" the tulip-head commented, "what that idiot should do is to stop wasting money the way he does and save."

"Not everybody is as stingy as you are." the Frenchman spat. "Antonio simply has some ambitions you don't…"

I stopped listening to the conversation. Emma had put in front of me a plate full of disgusting white sausages. I covered my mouth.

"Do you want me to serve you?" she asked me with sweetness and ignorance. I shook my head. "Aren't you hungry?" I denied again.

"Vee~  _fratello_ , it's strange you aren't hungry. Are you sick?" why the hell this idiot always has to speak when he shouldn't?

"You haven't eaten since yesterday, it's impossible you aren't hungry." grandpa said serving me some sausages and a succulent helping of potatoes on my plate, how disgusting! It turned my stomach violently.

"I…don't like… German food." I whispered with my head down.

"What did you say, Lovino? I didn't hear you."

"I do not eat German food" I raised my head. Grandpa looked at me serious.

"I think you are old enough to still have those fads with the food. At least try it first." he gave me a fork with a piece of sausage and a potato, I looked at the mouthful with disgust. I swallowed hard and brought it to my lips.

"NO WAY!" I threw the fork to the plate making a lot of noise and stood up. Everyone was staring at me, even the Frenchman and the tulip had stopped their argument to watch me. "I'M NOT GOING TO EAT THAT GERMAN JUNK AND YOU CAN'T FORCE ME!"

I got up from the table and left home slamming the door, showing my anger.

Great! I haven't been here for a whole day yet and I'm already fighting with my grandfather, he'll send me back to Italy on the first flight he finds, sure, and then my mother will kick me out. Dammit!

And the one to blame for what's happening to me is that Antonio I haven't met yet, damn bastard. Yes, it's his fault because if that moron hadn't played guitar in the middle of the night I would have slept when I felt sleepy and I wouldn't have woken up, so I'd have gotten up earlier and I'd have taken a good breakfast, making no difference if the lunch was German or English shit, I wouldn't be hungry or, at least, I'd be less hungry. And in addition, it was the idiot's turn to prepare lunch today and he changed his turn with the Germans, with the Germans of all people!

With these thoughts in mind, I began to wander aimlessly through the unknown streets of the city. I was lost and I didn't have money or my cell phone on me, fuck! It seems that sometimes Feliciano's stupidity is catching me.

I walked to a walk by the sea. In the distance the beach could be seen, I decided to continue my walk towards there, I was dying of heat and thirst (and of hunger too) and I was sure that on the beach would be a drinking fountain (or showers, in that moment I didn't mind) because in all the way I had walked I hadn't seen a single one.

After walking for a while, I don't know exactly how long because I didn't wear a watch, I finally saw what I was looking for. I took off my shoes and ran through the sand, the damn burned like the fire of hell but I didn't give a fuck.

While quenching my thirst (and tricking my stomach) with that disgusting warm water I felt something hit my back and burst against it leaving me completely soaked.

"BUT WHAT THE FUCK…?" I straightened and turned fast, terrible decision, I could only distinguish a figure that came running before I felt dizzy and fainted with the last vision of some green eyes on me.


	3. Guardian angel

_Chapter 3: Guardian angel_

My head hurt and my body felt very heavy. I opened my eyes slowly, everything I was seeing was white, where the hell I was? Maybe had I died? No, that's stupid, if I had died my head didn't hurt and my body didn't feel heavy.

"Oh, he is waking up!" someone shouted close to me.

"Try not to overwhelm him." another voice said. "And don't let him sit up yet! But make him take this slowly when he does."

I didn't know the voices of those who spoke. I turned to see who was beside me. A tanned boy with messy dark hair and shining green eyes (those that I have seen a moment ago or I had imagined it?) looked at me with a mix of worry and relief, slowly drawing on his face a beautiful and bright smile with perfect teeth (have I said beautiful and bright? Hunger makes me say strange things).

"What the hell happened?" I tried to sit up unsuccessfully, I was stopped by a tanned arm. "Can I know what the fuck are you doing, bastard?"

"You can't sit up yet" my insult didn't affect him apparently. "You suffered a fainting fit, if you get up fast you'll get dizzy, wait for a while".

I sighted with resignation, it didn't seem that the bastard was going to let me move.

"You can't imagine the scare I got. I was walking to you to apologize for the water balloon which was thrown by one of my boys and hit your back when you fainted all of a sudden. Luckily I could catch you before you reached the ground." So I really saw a pair of green eyes, it wasn't my imagination, what a relief!

"And why the hell a water balloon was thrown to me? Weren't there anybody else on the damn beach to bother?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We play to throw the balloons next to the fountain so that we fill them, but the one that hit you was actually directed to me, but it was too high and I couldn't take it."

"What a shitty excuse." I spat.

"I'm sorry" he apologized again. "To forgive me, I'll let you sit up a bit and give you this delicious apple juice." With a smile he wagged the juice's brick in front of my eyes, which opened wide as saucers, I wanted it!

"Ok, ok, ok, I forgive you!" I said eager. He smiled more if that could be possible and help me sit up a bit. "Give me that!" I tried to wrench the brick from his hands, but he took it back before I could catch it. "Idiot!"

"You have to drink slowly." He inserted the straw and slowly brought it to my mouth as if I were a little child. I felt my cheeks flushing, how embarrassing! "Hahaha, you look like a tomato, so cute~!" I was about to choke on the juice because of that comment, that asshole was laughing at me! I coughed and the bastard took back that delicious drink. "I told you to drink slowly."

"It has been your fault, idiot!"

"I'm not who is drinking…" the bastard answered back, but he brought the juice's brick to me again. "By the way, I still don't know your name. I'm Antonio." this guy's smile seems permanent.

"Buff, you've the same name as the bastard for whose fault this has happened to me."

"Really? What did that moron do to you so you ended up fainting on the beach?"

"To me directly nothing, but his actions have ended up affecting to me."

"I don't understand." He said scratching his nape as if thinking was something hard.

"I'm not surprised."

"Can you explain it to me?" he looked at me, imploring. I couldn't refuse, although I wasn't going to tell him all the details.

"Let's say that because of that idiot I ended up having an argument at home and I left without my cell, without money and without having lunch."

"That's why you fainted!" he shouted excited as if he had just discovered America. "Don't worry, I'll treat you to lunch when we are said that you can go."

"Really?" I got excited, free lunch! "Will you treat me? To whatever I want?"

"Sure! But with one condition" that sounded bad, what the hell was that bastard going to ask me? "You have to tell me your name!" Just that? I was relieved, it's not that I think the worst, but my mother taught Feliciano and me that we should not trust strangers… even if they save you from falling to the ground due to a faint.

"My name's Lovino."

"Nice to meet you." he stretched his hand to me and I shook it with mine. "And tell me, what do you want to eat, Lovi~?"

"Why are you so familiar, bastard? I'm Lovino."

"And I am Antonio, but you haven't answered me."

"Pizza! I want a pizza. But I don't want that shit it is served in  _Onlypizza_  or similar, I want a real Italian pizza."

"What a demanding boy!" shit, sure he'll retract. "Very well, I know an Italian restaurant that is near."

"Seriously? And will they let you in looking like that?" I hadn't noticed until that moment, but Antonio's contoured and perfect torso was naked… contoured and perfect torso? Where the hell have those words come? And why have I had to notice how is his torso? Fuck, fainting has really affected me because I don't know what I'm thinking now. I blushed again, the bastard laughed.

"Sure! I've got my T-shirt and my flip-flops in a locker right here and they have never raised objections for wearing beach clothes." What kind of den is he going to take me to? No good restaurant allows badly-dressed people enter."

As soon as I drank the juice, I was told I could go by the nurse or doctor or whatever the girl who assisted me was, but also she told me not to make any effort or stay in the sun for long.

Antonio helped me to get up, I still felt a little weak and dizzy. As bold as brass, when we left the infirmary, the bastard took the liberty of holding my hand. I let go of him with violence and anger.

"Why the hell do you hold me?"

"It seems that you still aren't very well, I wouldn't like you to fall again in the way, so I don't want you to leave my side." He held out his hand. I frowned at him. "Either that or I carry you in my arms like I did before." He made a movement with his arms to carry me.

"Idiot!" I blushed, to think he had carried me, unconscious, in his arms and he wanted to repeat the experience but with me being awake, no way! I gave him a head butt on his stomach, he deserved it, but I only got to feel dizzy again. Antonio held me by my shoulders until I felt better.

"You ok?" he told me with tears in his eyes because of the hit I gave him.

"Yes… now I am…" he stared at me and it seemed that he was going to insist with the idea of carrying me in his arms to the restaurant, so I agreed to hold his hand. He looked at me surprised for some second and then smiled widely.

"That's the way I like it." He ruffled my hair with his free hand. I blushed again.

The restaurant was quite close. The terrace was crowded with people, which made me think that we would have to wait for long till our lunch was served. Antonio proposed to go inside, I think it was the only intelligent idea he had, there wasn't any client inside and it was cool. The place was better than I expected, a genuine Italian restaurant.

We were served immediately. I would have liked to order a good Italian wine, but the bastard didn't let me, according to him because it wasn't a good idea after my fainting, I think he didn't have enough money. Anyway, at least the drink was brought fast, with a basket of bread which I delighted while we were waiting for our pizzas.

"And tell me, Lovi…"

"Lovino." I corrected him. He ignored me.

"…from which part of Italy are you?"

"I haven't told you I'm from Italy, how do you know?" it seems that he is cleverer than he looks.

"For your accent. Either you are from Italy or this year's carnival has affected you seriously." I didn't understand his comment, but I neither wanted him to explain it.

In that moment our pizzas were served, how fast!

"Grazie!" I told the waiter and put the first piece in my mouth despite it was burning, I was pretty hungry and the pizza was delicious! "I was born in Naples, but I have lived most of my life in Rome."

"Well, you speak Spanish very well."

"I couldn't help it! My grandmother was from here and my father forced Feliciano and me to take classes since we were children. And talking about children, bastard," I have just remembered certain detail I had overlooked until that moment, "where have you left those kids who soaked me?"

"With their parents, I wasn't going to take them to the infirmary, was I? Also, my work shift finished at two, the kids and I only were whiling away the time while their parents were coming for them."

"Are you paid for entertaining the kids who go to the beach?" I had never heard that kind of job existed.

"Yes, basically, and for taking care of them. The truth is that it's an exhausting job, but very comforting. And the best of all, it has let me meet you!" he added that last with the biggest smile of happiness I had ever seen. I blushed, again, and surely much more than the previous time, I could feel the large amount of blood that was accumulating on my face.

"Shut up, idiot!" I spat embarrassed and tried to dissimulate it eating another piece of pizza.

"The bad thing is that I can hardly stay another hour with you," there was a certain sadness in his voice, "I go back to work at five. Do you think you can come back home without problems? How far do you live?"

I paralyzed, I had forgotten the reasons why I had ended up having lunch in an Italian restaurant with a boy I had just met. Dammit! What was I going to do when Antonio went back to work? Wandering aimlessly again through the streets of the city? If I didn't even know where I was in that moment, how could I reach my grandfather's house? It would be a miracle if I could find it. And to top it all, because of I hadn't my mobile on I couldn't phone him, his number was in the cell, I didn't know it. I covered my face with my hands.

"What happens?" Antonio worried. "Are you feeling bad again?" I shook my head without moving my hands from my face. "Then? Ah, I know! You feel sad because I have to go with the children and I can't stay with you."

"Don't say bullshit!" although I was never going to admit it, he was partly right. "It's for other reason…"

"Which? Can't you tell me?" through my finger I saw he pouted.

"Well… it's… I don't know… I don't know… where I live."

"Poor Lovi…"

" IT'S LOVINO!"

"…if you are lost you could have said it from the beginning."

"I'm not lost!" I said angrily. "It's just that I don't know the address of the house where I live!"

"And is not that being lost?" he was really getting on my nerves.

"Fuck! I barely arrived yesterday in this damn country, I haven't had time to look at the fucking name of the street where it's supposed to be the fucking house where I have just moved in, I only know that it's in the old quarter, so don't keep on touching my balls saying that I'm lost, I simply don't know my damn address, but I have a slight idea about the area where it is,  _capito?"_

"Ok, ok, take it easy." The bastard smiled nervously. "I live in the centre too, maybe I know your family, the old quarter is not too big and there are not many Italians there, at least that I know." His doubt didn't give me much hope, but it was better than nothing.

"My grandfather is Romulo Vargas…"

"Seriously? Yes, now that you mention it you look alike…"

"Do you know him?"

"Sure, if I…" he made a weird expression that I didn't know what it could mean and then he recovered his smile. "Everybody in the city knows who he is, he has done many interesting things here." I didn't know what he meant by 'interesting', but I couldn't help reminding my mother's words talking about how irresponsible and womanizing my grandfather was, maybe in this city he was known for his facet of Casanova. "Was he the one you argued with?"

"Yeah…"

"And what was the reason of the argument?" what a gossip guy. "If I can know, of course…"

"German food…" I said in almost a whisper.

"What?" besides stupid and gossip, deaf.

"He wanted me to eat disgusting German junk which is called food, but for nothing in the world I intend to put in my mouth! Gross!"

"It's not as bad as all that…"

"It is!" I shouted angrily. "And don't you dare to say otherwise! Over my dead body I put that crap in my mouth. Just thinking about it makes my stomach turn." Antonio didn't seem to share my opinion about German food, but he didn't say anything. I sighted. "Well, the fact is that he wanted me to eat 'that', I got angry and made a scene." I hit my head with my fist when I weighted up the consequences of my outbursts. "Now he'll send me back to Italy… and my mother will get mad for having left Feliciano alone… and she will kick me out… and I'll have to live under a bridge… and… and…"

I kept quiet. Antonio bastard was laughing, was it funny what I was telling him? Is my misfortune a mockery perhaps?

"What the hell are you laughing at, bastard?!"

"How can you be so exaggerated and negative? Don't you think everything would be settled with a simple apology?"

"I'm not going to apologize!" I brought my pride up. "And even less for that."

"Although it implies that you end up under a bridge as you say?"

"Even so, so don't insist more with the same, bore."

"And just out of curiosity, what's that Antonio you mentioned before got to do with all of this? Because I don't see how it's connected."

"I woke up late because of him, how can anybody be such an idiot to play a fucking guitar in middle of the night? Doesn't he know it's annoying? And on top of that it was supposed that today's lunch should be prepared by him, but that idiot gave the turn to the potato-loving Germans. There you are."

"I see…"

When we left the restaurant it was almost time for Antonio to return to work. He made a sign to a taxi that was approaching and it stopped next to us. In that moment, he took the opportunity to hold me in his arms. I would have resisted, but the bastard took me by surprise.

"It's been nice to meet you, Lovi." He let go of me and pushed me into the car.

"What? What are you doing, bastard?"

"Sending you back home." He answered me calmly.

"B-But… if I still don't know the address."

"Don't worry, he does know." He pointed the driver. "I hope we'll meet again." He smiled at me. He went to the driver's window, told him something and gave him ten euros, the other one nodded. Antonio moved away and waved me goodbye.

"W-Wait…"

While I was watching how Antonio's figure grew smaller as the taxi was going away, a strange uneasiness invaded me. Fuck. What was that discomfort?

I guess the bastard seemed nice to me, just a bit! After all, he had helped me when I fainted… and he had treated me to lunch… and had paid the taxi to go home…

Goddammit! And I didn't even know if we would meet again… And I hadn't thanked him either!  _Merda! Merda! Merda!_  For a person that likes me (or that impression I got) I leave it to chance or whatever it is that plays with the destinies of people the possibility of meeting again.

Fuck!

* * *

I spent five minutes in front of the entry phone of my grandfather's house without deciding to press the button, I approached my finger and moved it away before pressing it. The old man saved me the bother, he appeared through the giant door. I held his gaze, but neither he nor I spoke, maybe because he was waiting for an apology that I refused to give him due to my pride.

" _Fratello!_ " Feliciano came running from behind and threw himself to my back with teared-eyes, does that idiot have to cry for everything? "Where were you? I have been looking for you with Ludwig all afternoon…"

Macho potato came to us slowly.

"Get away, stupid!" I pushed him aside. "Who asked you to go looking for me? And even less with that guy."

"Ve~, but  _fratello_ , I was very worried about you… as you left without eating…" shit, why did he have to bring that topic out so soon? My grandfather remained impassive. "I thought you'd be near here in a park, so I asked Ludwig to come with me because he knows the city."

"And what made you think I'd be in a fucking park?"

"Ve~ I remembered that time you got angry with mom and left home, but you got lost and didn't know how to come back and dad found you crying in a park near home…"

"YOU IDIOT!"

Feeling that my face was burning with embarrassment and anger, I jumped down Feliciano's throat, how the hell could he tell that embarrassing story? And to top it all, in front of the muscular potato-eater… It's to kill him!

"I hate you!"

Grandpa and the German hurried to separate us. My brother stayed coughing beside his new friend, while I was still red with anger trying to get rid of my grandfather's grip. I turned to the old man.

"Give me the fucking keys!" I spat.

I didn't have to say it twice. I took them away from his hand and ran into the building. Going up three floors of stairs made me relax (and get tired) a little, although I was still terribly angry… and the worst thing is that I didn't even know the reason, I guess it was due to the shitty day I had (except lunch).

I shut myself up in my room, I didn't want to see or listen to anybody. Luckily, Feliciano and grandpa opted not to disturb me for the rest of the evening. The one who did it was the pain in the ass of the next floor down with his damn guitar, he played a song that was too cheerful for my mood.

"Stop with that damn fucking guitar!" I shouted, stamping hard the ground so he could hear me and stop. He ignored me.

Feliciano knocked at the door to tell me the dinner was ready. I have to say that the atmosphere during dinner was so tense that could have been cut with a knife. Fuck, wasn't that damn day going to end?

I didn't bother to help to clear the table and much less to wash the dishes. I returned to my bedroom as soon as I ate the last bite of my pasta. I lay down on the bed, I was terribly tired, the day couldn't have been more exhausting.

Before falling asleep, the only remarkable thing of that fucking day came to my mind: Antonio. Why did I think about that bastard? Maybe because besides having helped me selflessly, he was the only person who, right after meeting me, had tolerated me for two whole hours without telling me to go to hell for my behavior. Would it happen that we meet again?

* * *

"Ve~  _fratello, fratello"_ Feliciano shook me when I was in the best part of a dream with the Johanson, "wake up, ve~…"

"What the hell do you want so early?" because it was still early, not even ten o'clock in the morning. "Isn't there anyone else to bother? Any muscular potato-loving German, for instance? Let me sleep!" I turned round for him to leave me alone so I could continue with Scarlett.

"Ve~ but,  _fratello_ , grandpa has sent me to call you… It seems that the neighbor of the next floor down is asking for you and wants to see you."

"The asshole of the fucking guitar?" I asked with curiosity, what would that guy want to see me for? Would he be annoyed by my stampings on the floor? If that was so, fuck him, his damn guitar annoyed me… and his damn existence too!

"What guitar?" my brother asked confused, there wasn't anybody more idiot than him.

I followed Feliciano, intrigued. I rubbed my eyes, still sleepy.

Grandpa was chatting friendly with the guy, who had his back to me, dressed in black trousers and a white shirt with long sleeves (ideal to bear the heat of the country, surely he has to be an idiot). When the old man noticed my presence, his face became serious and he pointed at me.

"Here he is."

The other turned to me with a smile… that unmistakable and bright smile of…

"Antonio!"


	4. Le petit italien

_Chapter 4: Le_ _petit italien_

Antonio's POV

Mr. Vargas and I met six years ago, when he acquired the building in which I was living, a nineteenth-century architectural jewel (or so I was told, because I don't understand anything about architecture). I arranged to meet him to convince him of allowing me to rent the apartment where I had been living. He was a hard nut to crack, but in the end I achieved my goal and even more: he showed an interest in the place and decided not only to settle there, but also to renovate all the apartments.

In spite of his intimidating look ―tall, strong, robust, well dressed and serious― the Italian turned out to be a very friendly, talkative and cheerful person, let's say that our character is similar, however he is more party-loving and uninhibited than me… uninhibited is the word? Well, it doesn't matter.

The thing is that Romulo is a guy who endears himself to everybody, so much so that we soon established what could be called a "good friendship": he helped me whenever I needed; he cheered me up in bad times and celebrated the good moments; he gave me good advice… and I gave him some too, he still keep saying that renting the apartments to foreign students is the best idea that he has ever been given! No doubt he knows how to make someone feel important… I can't deny that for me Romulo is more than a friend… is like a father!

For all of that, when I bumped into the most grumpy person ―and also the most adorable, it has to be said― I have ever met in my life, I was surprised a lot to discover he was none other than his grandson.

And how did I meet the little Italian? Purely by chance.

I would have liked to welcome them in the building on their arrival in Spain, as everybody else, but unfortunately (or luckily in these times) I was working. I usually work part-time in the children's clothing section of a store, but sometimes I'm hired as an animator for all kinds of events (I have to take care of the children and entertain them), as it happened that weekend.

Saturday was a full day. In the morning I worked in the store, in the afternoon on the beach, and in the evening in a wedding… What a long day! I remember that I got home in the small hours, pretty tired, and while I was going through the patio I thought I saw somebody in one of the third floor's windows, I guessed that it would be one of Romulo's grandsons, maybe he could not sleep.

I neither could, despite the fatigue.

I lay back on my bed with my guitar, playing always relaxes me. I know it was pretty late, after two in the morning, but no one had complained until then and the song I was playing was very soft and calm, like a lullaby. Although it took me a while, I finally succumbed to exhaustion.

The good thing about Sunday was that I only had to work on the beach, I started late and there were three hours between one shift and another in which I could rest. Or that was what I thought.

The last two kids that were left from the morning shift and I started playing with water balloons while we were waiting for their parents to come to pick them up. We stayed near the fountain to fill the balloons; moreover, there is usually nobody sunbathing there who we could bother and people are rarely seen drinking… the water come out warm.

The children's parents appeared and the kids threw me the last two balloons, one fell on the sand near me and burst, but the second one passed over me and hit and burst against the back of a young boy that, unbelievably, was drinking from the fountain. I ran to him to apologize and I saw him straightening and turning fast.

"BUT WHAT THE FUCK…?" he shouted and collapsed.

I held him in time before he hit the floor. He had fainted. I got scared. I carried him in my arms, he wasn't heavy at all, and ran as fast as I could towards the infirmary. The girl there told me to lie him back on a stretcher and made him a little examination, apparently he had suffered a fainting fit due to the heat… that sounded really bad, I looked at her with concern.

"Relax, he will wake up soon." She calmed me down.

I stayed beside the stretcher watching the boy. He had an angelical face while he was sleeping. I couldn't see his eyes when he fainted, but I bet they would be a beautiful color that would go perfectly with his chestnut hair from which a strange curl stood out. His lips were fine and pink, surely they would also be soft and wet… what a beauty! Although his face was strangely familiar… His body was thin and slender and, only then I realized, he didn't wear beach clothes but long jeans and a shirt, where would he have come from?

He started moving and opened his eyes slowly. What I said, they were beautiful! Olive on the edge and honey inside.

"Oh, he is waking up!" I shouted, excited.

"Try not to overwhelm him." The nurse said. "And don't let him sit up yet! But make him take this slowly when he does." She gave me a brick of apple juice.

The boy turned his face to me with an expression of confusion drawn on it. I was relieved he had woken up at last, thank goodness, what a fright I got.

"What the hell happened?" he asked with a strong Italian accent trying to sit up. I stopped him as I was said. "Can I know what the fuck are you doing, bastard?" what a foul-mouth the boy had! And he only had said two sentences.

I answered calmly, informing him of what had happened to him. He sighted with resignation and settled down on the stretcher. He frowned and puffed his cheeks (what a lovely face!) and he showed annoyed when I told him about the water balloon which had bumped against him. I apologized several times, but he was reluctant to forgive me… Fuck, it wasn't my fault! Maybe I'd achieve it letting him sit up and giving him the brick of juice… those beautiful eyes opened wide as saucers when I put the brick of juice in front of him.

"Ok, ok, ok, I forgive you!" he said excited. I smiled and helped him to sit up a bit, but I took back the brick he eagerly tried to wrench from my hand. "Give me that! Idiot!"

"You have to drink slowly." I said as I inserted the straw and brought it to his mouth slowly. Suddenly he blushed, there is no words to describe how lovely he looked. "Hahaha, you look like a tomato, so cute~!" it seemed that he choked, I had already told him not to drink fast. "I told you to drink slowly."

"It has been your fault, idiot!" why did he blame me?

"I'm not who is drinking..." I would have finished the sentence saying his name, but I didn't know it. "By the way, I still don't know your name. I'm Antonio"

"Buff, you've the same name as the bastard for whose fault this has happened to me."

Oh blast, my name brought him a bad memory, but there are many Antonios in Spain… it can't be helped.

"Really? What did that moron do to you so you end up fainting on the beach?"

"To me directly nothing, but his actions have ended up affecting to me."

"I don't understand."

"I'm not surprised." He frowned.

"Can you explain it to me?" I asked him using the technique of imploring eyes, he couldn't refuse.

He explained that because of that guy he had had an argument at home and had left with nothing on him and without having lunch too. Of course, that explained why he had fainted. Poor boy. I offered to treat him to lunch, his face brightened with emotion.

"Really? Will you treat me? To whatever I want?"

"Sure! But with one condition" He put a strange grimace, of distrust, what did he expect I asked? "You have to tell me your name!" he relaxed his face.

"My name's Lovino." What a beautiful name, although to his cute little face suits something tenderer like… like Lovi! I'd definitely call him that.

"Nice to meet you." We shook our hands. "And tell me, what do you want to eat, Lovi~?"

"Why are you so familiar, bastard? I'm Lovino."

Apparently he didn't like the way I called him, but it's a name that suits him pretty well… I'll keep on calling him like that, I like the guy, I want us to be friends and friends should be treated affectionately, I know in the end he will end up liking it.

I asked him again what he wanted to eat. It turned out to be a pretty demanding boy because he wanted a genuine Italian pizza. Luckily I knew a good Italian restaurant that was near (sometimes I worked there as a waiter) and that was precisely owned by Mr. Vargas.

Lovi worried about whether I would be allowed to enter in the place with beach clothes. He looked at me from head to foot and turned red, very red. I couldn't help laughing at that cute vision. I told him there wouldn't be any problem, since I have never been raised objections.

As soon as the nurse told Lovi he could go, we walk to the restaurant. As he still felt weak and I didn't want him to faint in the way, I held his hand to keep him close. He got annoyed and let go of me with violence.

"Why the hell do you hold me?"

"It seems that you still aren't very well, I wouldn't like you to fall again in the way, so I don't want you to leave my side." I held out my hand, but he still looked angrily at me. "Either that or I carry you in my arms like I did before." I wouldn't mind to have him so close again. I made a movement with my arms to carry him, but he retreated.

"Idiot!" he blushed and threw himself to my stomach. That head butt took my breath away. He felt dizzy and I held him by his shoulders.

"You ok?"

"Yes… now yes…" he answered me. He blushed again and looked away, I didn't understand why, but then I realized he had held my hand. I surprised a lot with the gesture.

"That's the way I like it." I ruffled his hair and he blushed even more.

In the restaurant I decided to sit on the inside, in these summer days people prefers to stay in the terrace, but it's better inside because it's colder, and Lovi had been recommended not to be in the sun, it's not gonna be me the one who put his health at risk!

We were served immediately, it's the best thing of being known in the place. Lovi wanted to order some wine, but I wasn't going to let him drink alcohol after a fainting, who knows how his body would react. He resigned and ate all the bread of the basket that was brought while we were waiting for the pizzas.

I showed interest in his origins, he spoke Spanish pretty well, but he had a strong Italian accent, which made me think he was from there. He confirmed it, he was a Neapolitan who lived in Roma and was descendant of a Spanish woman, reason why he was forced to learn the language since he was a child. I tried to imagine him as a child with tan lovely face trying to memorize sentences in Spanish…

Lovi pulled me out of my thoughts when he asked me about the children who threw the water balloon to him, he thought they were mine or something like that! I talked about my job on the beach, he looked surprised by the work I performed.

"The truth is that it's an exhausting job, but very comforting. And the best of all, it has let me meet you!" I smiled. It was true, the boy was a bit grumpy, but I found him adorable despite everything, he blushed to the roots of his hair with my words!

"Shut up, idiot!" he spat embarrassed.

"The bad thing is that I can hardly stay another hour with you," I felt a bit sad, I barely know nothing about the little Italian and I was thrilled to know him more, but I didn't even know if we'd meet again, "I go back to work at five. Do you think you can come back home without problems? How far do you live?"

Lovi's face suddenly became white. His face showed… worry, I'd say, but I wasn't sure. Maybe food had disagreed with him. He covered his face with his hands.

"What happens? Are you feeling bad again?" he shook his head. Maybe he also felt sad for not meeting me again. "Then? Ah, I know! You feel sad because I have to go with the children and I can't stay with you."

"Don't say bullshit!" he bothered. Maybe he wasn't sad. "It's for other reason…"

"Which? Can't you tell me?" I pouted.

He was lost. He didn't want to admit it, he denied it, but it was that way. He was lost.

Apparently Lovi had just arrived in the country and he didn't know his address, but he lived in the old quarter and he had walked from there, that's more than half an hour walking! I tried to calm him saying that I also lived in the old quarter and maybe I knew his family, although the only Italian I knew was Mr. Vargas. What a surprise discovering that Lovi was Romulo's grandson! That's why his face looked familiar.

"Do you know him?"

"Sure, if I…" could it be possible that the Antonio who Lovi blamed for his misfortune was me? I swallowed hard, I had to find out what I had done so he ended up arguing at home. "… everybody in the city knows who he is, he has done many interesting things here. Was he the one you argued with?"

"Yeah…"

"And what was the reason of the argument? If I can know, of course…"

"German food…" I think he whispered.

"What?"

"He wanted me to eat disgusting German junk which is called food, but for nothing in the world I intend to put in my mouth! Gross!" If my friend Gilbert heard him saying that, he would beat him up… I can't let him get too close to Gilbert if he wants to keep that beautiful little face.

"It's not as bad as all that…"

"It is!" I had gotten he got angry again, all I do with this boy is wrong. "And don't you dare to say otherwise! Over my dead body I put that crap in my mouth. Just thinking about it makes my stomach turn. Well, the fact is that he wanted me to eat 'that', I got angry and made a scene." I think that Gilbert has already listened to him ranting about German food… that scene Lovi was talking about had to have happened during lunch, when all the tenants of the building gather together in Romulo's house to have lunch. Lovi hit his head with his fist. "Now he'll send me back to Italy… and my mother will get mad for having left Feliciano alone… and she will kick me out… and I'll have to live under a bridge… and… and…"

I couldn't help laughing, Lovi was being too dramatic. Knowing his grandfather as I know him, the most he'll get will be a little telling-off, nothing else.

"What the hell are you laughing at, bastard?!"

"How can you be so exaggerated and negative? Don't you think everything would be settled with a simple apology?"

"I'm not going to apologize!" he is very stubborn. "And even less for that."

"Although it implies that you end up under a bridge as you say?"

"Even so, so don't insist more with the same, bore."

I already know the reasons of the arguing, but what did I get to do with all of that? I still didn't understand it.

"And just out of curiosity, what's that Antonio you mentioned before got to do with all of this? Because I don't see how it's connected." I tried not to sound suspicious.

"I woke up late because of him, how can anybody be such an idiot to play a fucking guitar in the middle of the night? Doesn't he know it's annoying?" so it seems that I can't play the guitar again at night. "And on top of that it was supposed that today's lunch should be prepared by him, but that idiot gave the turn to the potato-loving Germans. There you are."

Ok, now all had sense… more or less. I understand he blamed me for the guitar playing, but it's not my fault that he doesn't like German food…

When we left the restaurant it was time for me to return to work, the best thing was to send Lovi back with his grandfather instead of letting him wander aimlessly. I made a sign to a taxi that was approaching and took the opportunity to hold the little Italian in my arms, as if we weren't going to meet again. He didn't resist.

"It's been nice to meet you, Lovi." He didn't even complain when I called him that way. I pushed him in the back seat.

"What? What are you doing, bastard?"

"Sending you home."

"B-But… I still don't know the address."

"Don't worry, he does know." I pointed the driver. "I hope we'll meet again." I smiled and closed the door. I went to the driver's window, told him our building's address and gave him ten euros, that was enough.

I moved away and waved goodbye until the taxi got out of my sight.

I took out my phone from my pocket and called Romulo.

" _Ciao_ , Toño" he sounded worried, "what happens, boy?"

"Hi, Romu. I've heard that a grandson of yours is lost, isn't he?"

"How do you know?"

"He told me himself. Don't worry, I have just sent him home in a taxi. He won't be long in coming."

"You always surprise me, Antonio." He laughed, he sounded more relaxed now he knew that his grandson was coming home. "I don't know how I'm going to thank you."

"Bah, it's nothing, but…" I remembered how worried Lovi looked when he talked about what would happen to him when he met his grandfather and, I don't know if it was because he blamed me, I felt a bit guilty of the situation he was. "…don't scold him so much… he hasn't had a good day precisely…"

"What do you mean?"

"It'd be better if he was the one who tell it to you." If I told him about the faint, he would worry again. "Ah! And… don't tell him anything about me, neither I've called you. "

"I don't understand why, but okay.  _Grazie_ , Toño."

"See you."

I wasn't sure how Lovi would react when he discovered I was the Antonio he blamed for his misfortunes, but something said me that he would be glad to meet me again, maybe it was due to the sad face he made when he was leaving in the taxi…

I spent the rest of the afternoon imagining our next meeting and thinking about him, I couldn't stop remembering that cute face. I would have gone to see him when I arrived home, but I thought it was too soon.

Without knowing exactly why, I can say I felt happy. I took my guitar from under the window and laid down on my bed just like the previous night, but instead of playing a lullaby I strummed the strings to obtain a happy melody, according to how I felt. A few blows sounded on my roof.

"Stop with that damn fucking guitar!" a voice said.

It certainly was Lovi, listening to him complaining made me feel even happier and play with more intensity.

The doorbell interrupted me. Was the little Italian so annoyed by my guitar that he had come to complain in person? I opened with a huge smile on my face which faded when I saw my two best friends, Francis and Gilbert. It's not that I didn't want to see them, but it gave me a thrill that it was Lovi.

"What a disappointed face,  _mon ami_ , did you expect anybody else?" Francis smiled mischievously.

"No…" I lied without conviction. "It's just that I'm a bit tired."

"No, no, no, no way, Toño, tonight there's no fatigue." Gilbert told while entering my home. "You're going out to drink with your two awesome friends. Do you have anything better to do? And don't say sleep, because I won't let you waste a Sunday night doing something so little fabulous as that."

"But I have to work tomorrow…"

"Us too,  _cher_ , but we haven't seen you for days, you can't blame us for wanting to have a good time with you, can you?"

They were right, I had been so busy working all the week that we had barely seen each other. I changed my clothes, under Francis' watchful eye, and we left.

"Well,  _mon amour_ ," Francis said, spinning the wine of his glass, "are you going to tell us who you were waiting for when he arrived?"

"I was waiting for nobody."

"For the song you were playing and the smile on your face when you opened the door, anyone could say otherwise." Francis has always been very perceptive. "By the way, you should stop playing guitar in the small hours, it seems that  _le petit italien_  is annoyed by it."

"Who?"

"One of Romulo's grandsons, Toño, do you remember they arrived from Italy yesterday?"

"Poor Toni," he put an arm over me, patting me on the back, "with that of working so much he is not up to date with what has happened in the building. But don't worry,  _mon ami_ , big brother Francis and your incredible friend Gilbert will inform you of the last events."

I was going to tell them that I was up to date with what happened more or less, but they didn't even let me speak.

"So the older little Italian is no more than a damn idiot and grumpy brat who has been able to despise the magnificent lunch that my awesome person had prepared with such care." He was certainly talking about Lovi, I smiled remembering him, but I was getting annoyed by Gilbert insults to him. "Spoiled brat…"

"If you had seen how he got, what a temper…" Francis rolled his eyes.

"For once I agree with the  _cabbage_ , what that kid needs is a good punch to kick all the nonsense out of him."

"And then his brother asked us to excuse him, because it turns out that the boy tends to be explosive…"

"That Feli is a good boy…" he took a long gulp from his mug of beer. "Ahh… kind, nice, funny…"

"And so cute,  _mon amour_!"

"They are completely opposite. That grumpy brat could learn from him…"

I was getting very irritated by all those criticisms to Lovi. Everyone has his own character, that people like or don't like it is not really important.

"But that little grumpy boy is so cute too… You'd have to see him, Toni. And what a butt he has…" I think I blushed at the thought of Lovi's ass. "Mmm, so tight…"

"Don't be perverted, Francis." Gilbert spat.

"It's a pity he loses everything with that horrible character he has…" he took a sip of his wine and finished it, putting the glass on the table with a sharp bang. "It would be funny being able to tame that shrew…" he continued with a lascivious tone and a smirk. I couldn't stand it anymore.

"Fuck, guys, stop now!" I spat, standing up. The two of them got alarmed.

"Toni,  _mon ami_ , why do you say that?"

"Because I don't like how you are talking about Lovi" I said, "he could be a bit grumpy and bad-mouthed, but he's an adorable boy and I'm not going to let you keep on ranting on about him."

"Lovi?"

"Adorable… boy?"

Gil and Francis shared a confused look and then put all their attention on me.

"Are you talking about  _le petit italien, mon ami_?"

"Do you know him perhaps?"

"Don't tell me it was him who you were waiting for when we got your home?"

"Eeeh…"

"Tell us everything,  _mon ami_!"

Francis and Gil took me by my shoulders forcing me to sit again and tell them everything that happened with Lovi.

"So  _le petit italien_  has stolen your heart." Francis concluded with excitement.

"Lovi hasn't stolen me anything, we have just met."

"Kesese…" Gilbert laughed. "As your most awesome friend I think that that looks like love at first sight… or at first faint, as you prefer to call it."

"The same as yours with Eli,  _mon ami_? Although that was actually love at first frying pan hit."

"I'm not in love with that tomboy!"

"Sure you are, Gil, accept it for good. If every time she appears, your ego increases a lot…"

"That's because I'm wonderful and get full of myself in front of everybody."

"Yes, whatever you say," he added sarcastically, "but if you don't hurry and do something, the sexy black-haired man with purple eyes will end up seducing her again."

"That stupid aristocrat has nothing to do against my awesome person!" he hit the table with his fist.

"Well, he admitted it at last." Francis said with pride while Gilbert looked at him confused. "Now it's your turn, Toni."

"I have nothing to admit. That what you say about Lovi has stolen my heart is just a figment of your imagination."

"Toni, your eyes and the smile you had while you were talking about  _le petit italien_  leave no room for doubt."

"Don't talk nonsense, I just want to be friends with him. Moreover, I like women."

" _L'amour_  knows no gender, darling." Francis caressed my face tenderly. "But if you really don't feel anything for the little Italian, as you say, you won't mind if I try something with him, right?"

The image of Francis with Lovi crossed my mind and I felt a kind of pinch in the pit of my stomach. My mind clouded.

"Don't even think about trying something with Lovi." I said with a serious voice, not usual in me.

"Well, another one who admits it. Calm down,  _amour_. At least your subconscious isn't as slow as you are."

That last he had told me… was good or bad? With Francis I'm never sure about if he is complimenting me or not… but he's my friend, whatever he says he'll say it for my own good, for sure.

I said goodbye to the guys when we reached the first floor of our building. Francis insisted several times that I should go to his apartment to take the last drink, but out of experience I know that 'take the last drink' with Francis and Gil means to drink an entire bottle of liquor per person.

I entered home repressing the urge to go up one more floor and pay a visit to Lovi to know how he was… although one o'clock in the morning is not a good moment to pay visits.

But half past nine in the morning is!

Dressed in my work uniform, the clothing store's one, I went up to Romulo's house. He received me with a good handshake followed by a strong hug. Obviously he asked me about the reasons of a visit so early in the morning, this man knows me pretty well and knows that I like to stretch out my time off until the very last minute.

"Feliciano, go call your brother." He told to his younger grandson, a boy that looked exactly like Lovi but with lighter hair and his particular curl on the other side of the head.

"F-For what,  _nonno_?" the boy said with… fear? Why would he be afraid? "He is probably sleeping…"

"Wake him up." Feliciano's face showed fear. "Tell him that I asked it to you, that the neighbor of the next floor down is here and he is asking about him."

"B-B-But…" Feliciano didn't move, he just watched me, confused.

"Run!"

"Ve!" with that scared scream, he ran down the hall.

Mr. Vargas told me that Lovino wasn't precisely in a good mood when he waked up, what made me wonder if it had been a good idea to pay a visit so early… but I was eager to meet him and see what kind of face he'd make when he saw me! He wasn't long in coming, Romulo and I were chatting about my busy weekend when he suddenly stopped talking.

"Here he is." He pointed behind me.

I turned around to meet with his sleepy face and those beautiful eyes that opened in surprise. I smiled.


	5. Grandpa in action

_ Chapter 5: Grandpa in action _

“Antonio!”

I was shocked, the bastard of Antonio was the last person I expected to meet right after getting up.

“Hi, Lovi~!” he greeted cheerfully. “I have come to know how you are after what happened yesterday.”

I felt the blood running to my face, how could he say that sentence? Didn’t he realize how fucking bad it sounded and how easy to misunderstand it was?

“Aren’t you seeing me, bastard, or have you become blind suddenly?” I shouted. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Vee~… what’s what happened yesterday,  _fratello_?” the idiot pipped in.

“NOTHING!” I barked.

“How can you say that a fainting fit is nothing?” shit, it seems that this idiot bastard doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. “What a scare you give me!”

“WHAT? A fainting fit?” my grandfather got surprised.

“You haven’t told anything to your grandfather?”

Fuck, grandpa would sure get mad because I hadn’t told him anything, as if he wasn’t angry enough with me because of the previous day’s events. He approached to me very serious. I closed my eyes and I cringed expecting a blow from him, but it didn’t come, instead, I was caught between the old man’s strong and suffocating arms.

“Why you have to be so stubborn?” he told me while rubbing his chin against my head and I tried to push him away to no avail, how strong he is! “You only get me to worry…”

“Chi… giiiiiii…”

While I was trapped in the old man’s hug, Feliciano approached the bastard.

“Excuse me, could you tell me what a fainting fit is, Mr. Neighbor of the next floor down?”

“My name is Antonio.” The bastard answered as smiling as always. “And you have to be Feli… I have been talked so much about you!” who has talked about my brother to this bastard? And more important, WHY?

The damn bastard caught that idiot of Feliciano between his paws, what made me feel nervous and angry, why the hell are they hugging? Can’t that bastard shake hands as everybody else?

One moment… has my idiot brother called Antonio ‘neighbor of the next floor down’? Yes, in fact he has woken me up because the idiot of the next floor down wanted to see me… What an asshole! It’s that when I’m just awaken my brain works as slow as Feliciano’s, how couldn’t I realize before?

I finally managed to free myself from the grip of my grandfather (family of limpets) and separated my brother from the bastard to confront him, if he thought he was going to make fun of Lovino Vargas as he wanted, he could keep on dreaming.

“Damn lying bastard!” I shouted. “So you are the imbecile who lives in the next floor down, you’ll have had so much fun pissing me off and laughing at me.”

“And why would I do that, Lovi?” he tilted his head and looked longingly… Arg! How the hell could he make that sad face? Damn bastard, he gets on my nerves.

“As if you didn’t know, idiot!” he scratched the back of his neck, what an idiot! He did know what I was talking about, he just was acting dumb pretending not… He spent all the previous afternoon knowing that it was his fault that I ended up fainting on the beach… and he didn’t have the balls to confess it! “And my name’s Lovino!”

“Lovino,” Grandpa pipped in, “from what I understand, Antonio found you lost” I didn’t get lost! “and sent you back home, you should show him a little gratitude, don’t you think?”

I ducked my head and crossed my arms. Yes, maybe I should thank the bastard… but, for what? By amending a situation that he had caused? Ha! No way!

Grandpa decided to let us alone taking Feliciano to the kitchen with the excuse of making breakfast. The bastard of Antonio took the chance to approach to me, much. In fact he was too close, so much that he held my chin gently forcing me to look up at his hypnotizing green eyes.

“It’s not necessary that you thank me anything, Lovi.” He said with a husky and sensual voice while smiling. I stared at him like an idiot for too long. I blushed.

“O-Of course not, imbecile!” I pushed him violently. “I wasn’t going to do it, what do you think? And my name’s Lovino, stupid!”

It seemed that at last something of what I did was affecting the bastard. The expression of constant happiness that he used to have disappeared of his face, being replaced by one of complete sadness. But why sadness? He should get angry, not get sad.

I frowned, crossed my arms and turned my face. I didn’t want to look into that bastard’s eyes, with that pity face he was making I’d end up thanking him for his help and then forgiving him for having mocked me… or admitting that what happened to me wasn’t his fault!

Fuck! It seemed that little sparkles of pain came out from his eyes and crashed against me to make me look at him and do what he wanted… It was a lost battle, I felt unable to resist… I had to think something fast so that he didn’t get away with it…

“Where are you supposed to go with those clothes?” score for Lovino and my stylish dressing. “You look like a traveling Bible seller.”

Gotcha! The bastard turned his gaze away to his clothing and those damn ocular sparkles that pricked me stopped.

“A Bible seller? Really?” he said funny, it seemed that the sadness had passed and he returned to his cheerful and smiling character. “Well, it’s my work uniform.”

“How the hell are you going to play with the kids on the beach with those clothes?”

“Beach?” was he acting dumb again or maybe is that so much sun had melted the few neurons that should be left in his stupid brain? “Noooo…” he said cheerfully as if he had just realized something very obvious.” I don’t work on the beach today but in a clothes store that…”

“Toni!” a feminine voice and a distant doorbell sound came through the windows. “Tooooniiiiiii! Have you overslept again?”

The bastard ran to a window and leaned out of it, adopting a very suggestive posture… why the hell is he leaning over the windowsill? Those fitted trousers didn’t leave much room for the imagination… and what the hell was I doing looking at his rear? Shit, I blushed again, of course.

“Emma!” that beauty was the one who was calling him? “Up here.” He waved his arm several times making the movement to travel through his perfect back… (but what I was saying?)

“What are you doing up there? Hurry up and come down now, we’re going to be late.” She scolded him.

“I’m coming!” he went inside. I turned my flushed face before he turned, I only expected that he hadn’t realized that I had been watching him. He approached me again with his typical smile. “Well, Lovi…”

“My name is Lovino.” I corrected him.

“… I can’t stay here anymore, the duty is calling me!” how much emphasis and joy for working. “But I’ll come to see you this afternoon.”

“You can save your visit, bastard.”

As answer, he laughed and ruffled my hair before leaving. What the fuck did that gesture mean? That he’d obey me or that he’d do whatever he wanted? He left me a bit disconcerted.

I sat on the windowsill and watched the bastard crossing the patio with Emma. They were chatting cheerfully and smiling... and very close too, more when Antonio threw an arm over the blonde and pulled her closer to him. I felt a kind of pressure in my stomach. Fuck, why does he have to be so near her? That damn Spaniard doesn’t know how to respect the personal space? Or maybe they were a couple, the complicity between them was palpable…

“Has Antonio already left?”

I jumped and got up from the windowsill. I was a bit flushed, but I didn’t want my grandfather to know that I hadn’t taken my eyes off his tenants while they left.

“A moment ago.” I answered. He clicked his tongue.

“Well, I needed to tell him something. Anyway, I’ll do it in any other moment.”

My grandfather came to me and threw an arm over my shoulders, it was useless wasting my energies trying to move away, so I allowed it, because of laziness, not because I needed a human contact to relieve the pressure that was still in my stomach.

“Well, Lovino, get ready…”

The cold tone of my grandfather’s voice and the way he squeezed my shoulder cleared my mind of all thoughts other than the bad feeling I had. I looked at him, his twisted smile gave me chills. I swallowed slowly.

“F-F-For what, grandpa?” I asked nervously beginning to sweat.

“We’re going to the doctor so you get a complete medical check.”

I don’t like doctors, they have a strange and sickly obsession with giving me painful and huge injections arguing that they look after my health. And my grandfather knows it.

“B-But… but if I’m perfectly fine, can’t you see? Nothing happened to me…”

“A person doesn’t faint just like that. We’re going to the doctor and there can be no argument about that!”

“NO!”

I didn’t want to argue about anything, I simply refused to go visit a damn quack doctor to pierce my body with its ten centimeters needles. I wanted to run away, but to my disgrace, grandpa kept me hold tight by the shoulder, preventing any kind of escape. I fidgeted several times trying to free myself until all of a sudden the old man, I can’t understand how because it was very fast, picked me up and carried me over his shoulder as if I were a vulgar bag of potatoes.

“CHIGIIII! Let me go, you’re gonna make me fall! I don’t want to go to the doctor!”

I would have kicked out, but I didn’t want to hit grandpa, who also held me tight, especially my legs. He started to walk to the door and I raised the volume of my protests. Feliciano came in the room, disconcerted.

“Ve~…  _Nonno_ , what are you doing to my  _fratello_?”

“Feliciano!” I shouted with effort, it’s not easy to raise your head when all your body is fighting against gravity. “Don’t stay there watching as an idiot and come to help me, fuck!”

“Feliciano, stay here, your brother and I will come back soon. Then we’ll go to visit the city.”

That damn stupid stayed where he was with his foolish face, waving us goodbye, he didn’t even pay any attention to me!

My grandfather showed me the great physical shape he was when he went downstairs carrying me without even getting tired. I kept on complaining, but I was completely ignored.

“ _Aspetta, nonno, per favore!”_

“I don’t understand you, Lovino~.” He said cheerfully. Besides ignoring my complains, he played dumb.

When we were on the second floor landing, the tulip-head came from his house. Grandpa greeted him kindly, as if carrying me was the most normal thing in the world. The blond made a gesture that said clearly ‘God, where the fuck I am’, but then a kind of smile drew on his face, he took his phone out of his pocket and held it in front of me while going downstairs behind us.

“What the fuck are you doing with that damn phone, Harry Potter?” I moved my hands trying to take it, something difficult when you are upside down on the back of somebody who’s walking downstairs.

“Laughing at a little, idiot, rude and spoiled crybaby…”

“You’re an asshole, damn fucking tulip!” I made a great fuss to take the mobile phone away from the blond, but I only got some contempt looks and that he laughed at me more.

When we reached the first floor landing, grandpa moved aside and let the giant tulip pass. He gave me one last mocking glance before disappearing of my sight. I renewed my protests and, seeing that they were being ignored again, I entered in a desperate mode, goodbye to my pride.

“Grandpa,  _nonno, per favore_ ” I held his shirt tight, what I was going to say was too humiliating and wasn’t easy to spit out, “if it’s what you want, I apologize for everything I said and did yesterday, I’m really sorry.” I closed my eyes tightly, some tears were trying to go out, but I wouldn’t allow it, I was humiliating myself so much. “Punish me as you want, but not like this, please!”

Grandpa stopped. For a moment, I thought he had accepted my apologies and that he’d reject the idea of visiting the doctor, but nothing more cut off from reality, instead of getting me down from his shoulder, he rang a bell. We were in the patio, the only house that was there was the one of the hot Hungarian girl. She was who received us.

“Hi, Romu!” for her voice tone it seemed that she didn’t find weird that my grandfather was carrying me like a bag of disgusting potatoes. “What can I do for you?”

“ _Ciao_ ,  _bella_ ” he closed the door and finally put me down. I felt a bit dizzy due to the sudden change of position, “I bring you an unruly patient. He needs a complete check.”

The Hungarian was the doctor? For some reason that reassured me…

“Very well.” Elizaveta answered with a mischievous face. She put on her hands some white latex gloves that snapped when she fitted them properly.  My calm left the  same way it came. I  swallowed slowly . “Sit down. What happens to him so you bring him to me?”

“Nothing happens to me!” I answered fast as grandpa forced me to sit on a chair and held my shoulders to avoid a possible escape.

“He fainted yesterday, apparently with a fainting fit.”

“But I’m fine now! The girl who assisted me told me, or ask your idiot Spanish tenant, he was there and heard it too…

I suddenly shut up, Eli put a big black bag on the table and began to search inside. It was the injection, sure, she was looking for a fucking hypoallergenic syringe of those that pierce the skin to the bone.

“Here it is!” she smiled when she found what she was looking for.

She took out something long. I closed my eyes instinctively, expecting a painful prick…

The Hungarian lifted my eyelid and blinded me with… the light of the little lantern she had took out! So in the end it wasn’t a syringe. She did the same with the other eye. Then she put a tongue depressor in my mouth and made me say ‘aah’; she auscultated me; she knocked my knees; she measured my blood pressure. She wrote down the data in a small notebook.

“Give me your finger.” She told me grabbing my middle finger strongly and approached a black thing that pricked it.

“AUCH!” I move my hand away. “DAMN FUCKING BITCH…!

BAM!

A frying-pan hit my head, where the hell had it come from so suddenly? I cringed and put my hand on the incipient bump that was going to appear, I could almost say that I was seeing stars.

“I warned you to be careful with Eli.” Grandpa whispered in my ear.

“Have you had breakfast?” the  _professional_  doctor said while looking the thing that had pricked me (I know that some damn needle had to pierce my skin).

“No!” I answered angrily. She wrote down in her notebook.

“Does anything hurt?” that damn bitch had to be joking. I glared at her.

“My head.”

“Since long ago?”

“Since a certain Hungarian that calls herself a doctor hit me with a frying pan some minutes ago.” I spat. She kept on writing down calmly.

“Anything else?”

“My finger?” I raised it to make the gesture, not because the pain. I don’t like to be rude to women, but this one was getting me to throw away my principles in relation to them, I don’t know if it would be due to the fact of being a doctor or due to something else.

Grandpa slapped me on the back of the neck. On the other hand, the Hungarian looked at me narrowing her eyes and brought her hand dangerously close to the handle of the frying-pan that was on the table.

“Very well!” she read her notes and smiled widely, this time with a sincere and beautiful smile. “In view of the test I have done, I can tell you, Romu, that your grandson is perfectly fine, he’s healthy as a lettuce.”

“Happy?” I crossed my arms. “I had already told you.”

The old man ignored me… once again.

“You don’t know how glad I am to hear that, you take a weight off my mind.” He approached Elizaveta and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “ _Grazie mille, bella_.”

Grandpa held my arm and we left the Hungarian’s house.

“It wasn’t as bad as you thought, was it?” the old man smiled and ruffled my hair.

“Leave me!” I complained moving his hand away. “It’s so easy for you to say it, your finger hasn’t been pierced and your head hasn’t been about to be split in two.

“Don’t exaggerate!” grandpa laughed, pulled me in a hug and kissed my forehead (agh, how clingy he could be). “Come on, let’s go to have breakfast, Feliciano must be tired of waiting for us. And after that we will go sightseeing around the city!”

Yeah… what a  _fantastic_  morning.

* * *

 

The Spanish bastard didn’t come that afternoon, although he said the contrary. It seemed that he took my last comment seriously. It’s not like I minded he didn’t come, I wasn’t waiting for him, of course not! It’s just that it bothers me that people say they’re going to do something and then don’t give a damn about that.

Well…

With the tranquility and comfort of having the sofa in the living room only for me, I was zapping the TV channels, because there was nothing to watch, what a shitty Spanish programming, so many channels and not a single decent program… I should find some hobby like Feliciano who was playing happily with the paint materials (easel, canvas, oils…) that grandpa had bought him that same afternoon, how generous!

Okay, I guess that if I were to study something, the old man would buy me things too.

And talking about him, he had been locked in his study talking on the phone (business matters) since he came back from buying the materials with Feliciano. I didn’t go with them, I had enough strolls that morning while doing sightseeing, we walked round the entire old town, luckily it’s relatively small… but no less exhausting. For the next time, grandpa had already threatened us (at least I consider it like that) that we’ll visit the museums and monuments of interest in which we haven’t entered… No  comments …

The doorbell interrupted my hard work of searching TV entertainment. I called out Feliciano to open the door, but nothing, he would be so immersed in his magical-fantastic world of paint and  colours  than he didn’t even hear me, or maybe he would have gotten trashed on the dissolvent inadvertently, which wouldn’t surprise me, and also it would make him be in his magical-fantastical world…

It was me who opened the door, as always.

“Hello, Lovi~!”

A smiling and annoying Spaniard greeted me from the other side of the doorframe. I was tempted to close the door in his face.

“ What have you lost here, bastard?”

“Lost?” he tilted his head. "I haven’t lost anything… I’ve come to see you, I told you this morning that I’d do it.”

“It’s after nine, you said you’d come in the afternoon.”

“It’s not night yet.” Damn Spanish bastard with an answer for everything. “I didn’t come before because I have just woken up from a nap… a long one. Have you been waiting for me?”

“Pff, as if I had nothing better to do.” I crossed my arms and puffed my cheeks. “Moreover, why would I want to see you? Because of your damn mouth, my grandfather had the great idea of taking me to the downstairs crazy Hungarian so that I got a medical check."

“Really? And how it was?”

“She did me this,” I showed him my finger, which has become a bit purple, “and what’s more, she hit me with a frying-pan, that damn…”

“Oh, poor boy” he interrupted me while stroking my head as if I were a fucking pet. “I’m sorry you had a bad time.”

“Don’t touch me, idiot!” I pulled his hand away angrily. "What the hell have you come to?"

“Haven’t I told you yet? To see you, this morning I told you that I’d do it.”

“Well, you have already seen me. Now go.”

I was about to close the door, but he stopped it by holding it with his hand and entering.

“Hey, wait, have you had dinner yet?”

“It’s none of your business!”

_ “Bonsoir, mes amis!” _ the perverted Frenchman appeared behind the bastard. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” I asked.

“For what? Toni,  _mon cher_ , haven’t you told them yet about our plans for tonight?” the Frenchman rolled his eyes.

“That’s what I was doing right now, Fran.” He scratched the back of his neck and grinned.

“Don’t tell me you have just woken up from your nap.” The bastard nodded. “ _Mon Dieu_ , forcing yourself to work so much can’t be good.” The pervert came in without asking for permission. “Anyway, I’m going to tell Romu.”

“Hey, you!” I shouted. The Frenchman stopped and turned his head. “Where do you think you are going? My grandfather is busy!”

“You’ll see he is not busy anymore. Romu!”

The Frenchman resumed his way to my grandfather’s study calling out his name. I stayed where I was with a vein throbbing dangerously in my temple, does everybody enter in this house when they please?

“Come on, Lovi,” the bastard said, “call Feli and get ready to go out.”

“ To go out where? Today is Monday!”

“Ve~ Has anybody called me?” Good time for my idiot brother to come, when I call him he turns a deaf ear, but when another one speaks of him, he knows it. “Hello, Antonio!”

“Yes, idiot, I called you almost an hour ago to open the door, but you ignored me.”

“I didn’t hear you,  _fratello_.”

“Yeah…”

“How nice that you have appeared, Feli. Right now I was telling Lovi to call you and get ready to go out…"

“To go out where?!” I began to lose patience.

“To go out for tapas!” grandpa said, approaching with the Frenchman. “Come on, boys, get ready. Everybody else is waiting for us.”

Feliciano ran to his room. On the other hand, I remained with my arms crossed in front of my grandfather and the other two. I didn’t want to have to put up with all the idiot tenants of my grandfather, starting with those two who were in front of me and ending with the frying-pan doctor”.

“Is it obligatory?”

“I’ll take you there the same way as I did this morning if necessary.” The old man threatened me.

I couldn’t help but obey.

Fuck, two days, I have been only two fucking days in Spain and my grandfather hasn’t stopped forcing me to do things I didn’t want to do: eating German food (ok, I skipped that and made a scene), going to the doctor, doing some sightseeing, and now going out with all the people of the building. I don’t know why my mother can’t stand him, they are two of a kind!

The smiling bastard was the only one who was waiting for me when I come back to the living room. Grandpa, Feliciano and the Frenchman had already gone to the bar. I don’t know how the old man would intend to carry me if I refused to go when he had already left.

“Why don’t you go before?” I said, hoping to get rid of the meeting. “I’ll catch up with you in a moment.”

“Your grandfather has already warned me. He told me not to leave without you and that if you refuse to come with me, I drag you out if necessary, that this morning he did it to take you with Eli.” I clenched my fists as I remembered, how embarrassing! “Come on, Lovi, we’ll have a good time.” He held out his hand.

“IT’S LOVINO!”

I snorted angrily and left the house before him. He caught me up in the patio and we walked to the tapas bar where the others were. Luckily the place was near, because you’d think that he’d been wound up, he didn’t stop talking during all the way. Apparently, grandpa told him about our morning walk around the city and he talked about the emblematic places. I didn’t pay attention, I had had enough with visiting them by force.

“Come on, boys!” Emma scolded us from the door of the place. “The waiter has already passed three time, three!”

We came in, everybody was already sat. My brother, between the potato brothers, was chatting with both of them cheerfully (why does he have to be damn king of sympathy and become friends with everybody?). My grandfather was beside the Frenchy, with whom he shared a grin… I think they were talking about their conquests. The tulip was in his own world apparently, well, concretely he was watching something very funny on his phone because he didn’t stop laughing, or looking at me all the time… I think I have a slight idea of what he was watching on the screen.

I sat next to Emma, who sat beside his brother and tried to see what was entertaining him. The bastard went to the bar instead of sitting down to table, and we were supposed to be in a hurry to order.

“And where’s Elizaveta?” I noticed the Hungarian wasn’t there, it was a pity, because although she was a bit crazy (a lot in reality), the girl was a feast for the eye. “Did you scold us for being late and she hasn’t arrived yet?”

“Eli won’t come today,” Emma answered, “she is on duty in the hospital tonight.”

“Aam…”

I only hope she doesn’t break the heads of her other patients with a frying-pan.

“For you!” the always smiling Antonio surprised me putting in front of my eyes a wide grass filled to the top with a reddish drink. “I hope you like the summer red wine.”

“Eh… ah…” I grabbed the cold glass and my fingers brushed his. I felt a shiver that ran through my entire body, no doubt it was caused due to the low temperature of the glass (why would it be otherwise?), but for some unknown reason, I also noticed that my cheeks blushed. I looked away from his eyes.“Thanks…”

Antonio widened his smile, drank a sip of his drink, summer red wine too, and sat between my grandfather and me.

Ours was, without doubt, the loudest table of the place. Some customers gave us disapproving looks, gang of killjoys, as if we were annoying them! Yes, I recognize it, I was having fun dininng in the company of such a diverse group. Contrary to what happened to me when I went out in Italy with Feliciano and his friends (who didn’t like me and I didn’t like them either, but whom I was forced to stand by my mother’s order), I felt part of the group, and I only spent the time listening to all the conversations without taking part, unless they asked me directly.

The two who kept out of the others’ conversations for a while were grandpa and the bastard of Antonio, who were talking between themselves, both showing an unusual serious face (but Antonio smiled slightly from time to time). I remembered that in the morning grandpa had said that he needed to tell something to his tenant, but what kind of business were that two up to be so serious and indifferent to the others? They had aroused my curiosity.

“What will those two have to talk so much about?” the tulip told his sister in a low voice. Well, I was not the only one that noticed the strange attitude. “I hope it is not about a rent rise.”

“Brother, what would be the point in Romu talking about that only with Antonio when that’s an issue that concerns us all and we are practically all here?”

“As if you didn’t know: your  _friend_ ” he put special emphasis and hatred in the word  _friend_ , “is the lapdog of our landlord, who counts on him for practically everything, even to make decisions.”

It was the first time I listened to somebody saying that my grandfather needed the opinion of other person to make decisions, he has always been characterized by not taking other people’s opinion into consideration. Although he also recognized that Antonio convinced him with the idea of renting the apartments to foreigners… maybe he was starting to become senile.

“Brat,” the tulip told me, if we hadn’t been dinning inside a bar, I would have made him regret calling me that way, “what do you know about that?”

“Nothing, why would I have to know anything? I only have been here for two days and I AM NOT interested in the old man’s issues.” I crossed my arms, narrowed my eyes and leaned towards the tulip. “And if I knew something, why the hell would I have to tell you?”

“For nothing,  _crybaby_ , for nothing…”

I blushed to the roots of my hair in anger. The damn tulip was trying to make fun of me reminding me something as embarrassing as what happened that morning, what an asshole! When he saw my face, the blond grinned before turning his head towards the German to take part in his conversation.

_ Che palle! _

Puffing my cheeks and snorting, I turned my face to the other side.

The mysterious conversation between grandpa and the bastard had finished. Antonio had recovered his sparkling smile and nodded as grandpa, laughing, patted his back and then he got up and walked away from the table.

“What happens, Lovi?” the bastard fixed his emerald eyes on my face. “You are so red that look like a tomato…”

“Nothing!” I growled. He laughed. “What were you talking about with my grandfather to be so serious?”

“Eh…? Well…”

He didn’t answer me.

The Frenchman was patting the bastard’s shoulder impatiently. He looked at the blond, me too. The Frenchy had his eyes fixed on the bar, just like the albino, who was patting his shoulder and his brother’s. I was curious, so I turned my head to see what was so interesting.

I couldn’t believe it, I even rubbed my eyes. My jaw could have reached the floor due to the surprise. There, next to the bar, was my grandfather, with the most radiant smile I had ever seen on his face, FLIRTING with two women a bit younger than him, not with one BUT WITH TWO! And on top of that it seemed that he was doing well because both women were laughing at what he was telling them, how the hell does he do it?!

The two women went to the door and the old man came to the table.

“They’re newly divorced who don’t want any kind of attachment.” He exclaimed, closing his fist as a sign of success.

Everybody except the macho potato and the tulip, who seemed to feel embarrassed, cheered him. And the idiot Feliciano… looked at the old man with that silly smile he put when he didn’t understand what was going on around him.

“Well, guys, there are two beautiful ladies waiting for me, so I say goodbye. By the way,dinner is on me.” They cheered him again, including the tulip this time (how stingy, he cheers because of the free dinner). “Lovino!” grandpa threw me a bunch of keys. “Take care of your brother and lock the door.  _ Ci vediamo! _ ”

And he left with the women.

I spent the rest of the night astonished by what I had just witnessed, I had confirmed by myself that those stories about my grandfather that my mother used to refer to were true.I would love to see my mother’s face when she found out that his little cherub in person had had the pleasure of being present to confirm it. Because she would find it out, I had no doubt, that bigmouth of my brother would tell her as soon as she phoned. The trouble is that, knowing her as I know her, I’m sure she would blame me for letting my brother see grandpa in action.

We came back home as soon as we finished our drinks. Feliciano walked next to his new best friend, the potato bastard; Emma and her brother were the first, chatting between themselves; I advanced behind the group formed by the Frenchman, the albino and the bastard of Antonio. The latter urged me several times to walk with them, but I refused, I preferred to keep a safe distance from his two buddies, who were remembering some of the most memorable conquests of my grandfather, what made me think that night scene wasn’t new at all.

Back in the building, each one got into their respective apartments while passing, since everybody rejected the suggestion of the Frenchy of continuing the ‘party’ in his flat, although his buddy the albino did it forced by the murderous gaze his brother gave him.

“I hope you don’t think about playing your fucking guitar again tonight, bastard,” I warned Antonio before he entered in his flat, “because I swear that if I hear it…”

“Don’t worry, Lovi~,” he interrupted me, “even if I spent the whole afternoon sleeping, I still have a lot of sleep to recover. Moreover, I don’t want you to get angry at me again for make you spend a sleepless night.”

“You’d better!”

“Yeah, yeah. Good night!” he ruffled my hair in an affectionate way and, before I could complain about it, he closed the door behind him.

Fuck, suddenly everything went silent. I went up the stairs two at a time, not because I was afraid, but because Feliciano was waiting for me to enter, sitting on the floor and cowering in fear, by the way. It was enough for him to see me to throw his arms around my neck and remain there until we were inside the apartment.

But I wasn’t going to get rid of my idiot brother so easily that night. I was already in bed, not asleep, when I heard a knock on the door of my room and I saw it opened. With the light that came through the window I could see Feliciano below the doorframe, hugging a pillow as if it was a stuffed toy.

“Vee~ fratello, are you asleep?”

“What do you want, idiot?” the question was a bit stupid because I already knew what he had come for.

“Can I sleep with you?”

“No.”

“ _Per favore!”_  he begged.

“I had said no, idiot! Go away!”

“But… but…” I knew by the tone of his voice that his eyes would be full of tears although I couldn’t see them. “I’m afraid of sleeping alone… and… and…”

“These last nights you have slept alone and wasn’t afraid.”

“Because grandpa was at home… but not today… what if somebody comes in and hurts us taking advantage that we are alone?”

“Feliciano,” I said trying to remain calm, “I remember you that on the first floor there is a German built-in wardrobe and on the second there is a giant tulip with an angry face, not to mention the crazy Hungarian with her frying-pan, who’s not here today, NO ONE in their right mind would dare to enter.”

“Ve… but…” he began to whimper. “Ve… but…”

I couldn’t bear to keep on listening to his whining.

“Okay, idiot.” I agreed. “Come in!”

“ _ Grazie, fratello!” _

He jumped into the bed and even made me bounce. I growled and settled down with my back to him. At least, he’d let me sleep peacefully.

“Ve~  _fratello_?”

No. Of course not, I’m talking about Feliciano, a bore in capital letters, it was impossible for him to let me in peace only for the fact of letting him sleep in my bed.

“What do you want?” I began to get mad.

“Grandpa’s tenants are very sympathetic and kind, don’t you think so?”

“Buff, that brainless bunch? Come on, the only different one is the blonde.”

“Vee~… well, I really like them all” he said happily.

"Yes” I growled, remembering him stuck to the potato bastard all the time. “I have already noticed.”

“And you don’t get along with Antonio?” he asked. “That’s what I thought.”

“And what made you think that?” I asked with a touch of anger.

“Well… I don’t know. I guess I got that impression when you were talking this morning… and this evening too when I saw you two chatting at the door, and in the bar, and before you got home… You don’t usually talk so much to anybody…”

Great, what I needed to sleep at easy, that Feliciano reminded me how antisocial I am.

“Well, we don’t get along because he is a damn bore and that, but…” I had to admit that Antonio hadn’t stopped being kind with me despite I didn’t stop insulting him and pouting. “But… it’s not like… I don’t like him… And sleep now, fuck!”

He remained silent. At last it seemed that he was going to let me rest.

“Veee~…  _fratello?”_ I was wrong.

“Whaaaaaaat?” I growled, gritting my teeth, the vein in my temple began to throb dangerously.

“Do you think that what happened to grandpa has been love at first sight?”

“Feliciano…” I said slowly, taking a breath so not begin to hit him. “Do you listen or it’s that your mono-neuronal brain doesn’t process the information? Grandpa has NOT fallen in love, nor at first sight nor anyway. He DOES NOT want attachments and NEITHER those women, they have gone to spend the night together and that’s all, I’m sure that tomorrow he won’t ever remember their names.”

“And you don’t think it could happen?” he insisted. God, why do you force me to be surrounded by bores? “Don’t you believe in love at first sight?”

“Of course not! Don’t be stupid, that’s nothing more than bullshit in which fifteen-year-old girls believe. And sleep now or I swear that I’ll give you a kick that will take you back to the Disney world you have come from!”

“Ve!” he got scared. “Okay…  _ Buonanotte _ ,  _fratello_.”

_ “Buonanotte _ .”

I sighted tired, only Feliciano could ask such stupid questions before going to sleep, I don’t know how he could have such a dreamy mind.

I settled down again on my side of the bed and closed my eyes. The brief of an emerald gaze crossed my mind before falling deeply asleep.


	6. Music for ears

_Chapter 6: Music for ears_

Except for the so hectic first days I had when I arrived in Spain, the rest of the first week at my grandfather's house passed quite calmly. Very few things were remarkable during those days, as Feliciano and I ended up sunburned after our second day at the beach (the bore begged me unstoppably to go with him, on the contrary I wouldn't have moved from the sofa); and that my mother phoned and found out about grandpa's love affairs by my brother's mouth and, of course, I had to bear her shouts and accusations… until I hung up the phone in the middle of her monologue (one of the advantages of being 3000 kilometers away, not having to put up with my mother's anger).

And that way, after several boring days, Saturday night came.

And what could a nineteen-year-old boy like me do on a Saturday night? Nothing better than enjoying a great film like  _The Godfather_  comfortably lying down on the couch and without anybody around to disturb me.

Exactly, Feliciano wasn't at home. At noon, when we came back home after buying everything necessary for the (stupid) community lunch that we had to prepare that week, we met the macho potato on the landing of his apartment and, of course, the always kind and sociable Feliciano had to stop to chat with him. Obviously, I didn't stay there, I ignored the German presence and went upstairs. My brother didn't take long to appear, though, with one of those silly smiles that often decorate his face due to any nonsense, specifically because he had arranged to meet the potato bastard to go to the cinema that evening, he even asked me if I wanted to go with them! Yes, as if I had nothing better to do (ok, I didn't have, but I'd rather do anything before go out in the company of the potato bastard).

Grandpa had left too. I don't know if he'd have arranged to meet someone or he simply went out to look for a 'prey' to spend the night with. The truth is that I didn't want to think much about it, in itself it was already quite depressing that my grandfather, at his age, had a more active sex life than mine.

Anyway, there I was, lying down on the comfortable couch enjoying one of my favourite films without anybody around to disturb me. But, as it usually happens to me, it was enough for me to gloat over this situation so that something happened and ruined it, specifically that the doorbell rang.

"Hello, Lovi~!"

That bore of Antonio (because he hasn't any other better way to be described) had come almost every evening of that week to talk to my grandfather, I don't know about what issue because he didn't want to tell me anything despite all the questions I asked him. And I had had too much time to pump him about it since, after each one of those mysterious and secret meetings, the bastard stayed with me (I wanted to or not) and we chatted about anything for a long time.

"My grandfather is not at home."

I wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible to keep on watching the movie, I tried to close the door, but he stopped it with his hand and came in without asking, the same as everyone in that building.

"It doesn't matter, I came to see you."

"Why?" I asked with boredom.

"You ask why?" he looked upset, as if the reason of his visit was obvious, but it wasn't. "It's Saturday night, let's go out and have some drinks!"

"I pass."

I walked to the couch and sat on one end hugging a cushion. The bastard didn't hesitate to follow me and sit on the other side to try to convince me. Luckily for me, the film was in the middle of advertising.

"Come on, Lovi." He pouted. "Come have a drink out there."

"No, leave me alone."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't feel like it, I'm watching a film."

"When it ends." He began to get on my nerves.

"It will be very late. Moreover, what interest do you have in me going out with you?

"Well… friends go out together to have fun."

Friends? The day we met, I got the impression that he liked me and, in spite of how I behaved with him, Antonio put up with me without erasing the smile on his face, but did he really consider me his friend in such a short time? I strange feeling of joy overcame me. I smiled slightly.

Antonio's eyes sparkled with illusion, why? I looked away and watched the movie that had just come back from publicity, hiding part of my face behind the cushion I was holding.

"You have smiled!" he exclaimed excited.

"You're wrong!" I lied. "I haven't smiled, you have imagined it."

"You can't fool me, Lovi…"

"It's Lovino." I corrected him for nth time.

"It's the first time I see you smile." Fuck, how could this guy notice a trivial detail as a simple smile and get so excited about that? I hid my red embarrassed face behind the cushion a bit more. "Does that mean that you are going to go out for a drink with me?"

"No, and don't insist." I said with my face still hid while watching TV. "I'm not gonna move from here."

"Joo~ Lovi," he approached to me, "come on…"

"No! Leave me alone!"

"Pleeeease." He begged in a childish voice. He held my T-shirt's sleeve and began to pull it, he was even borer than my brother, "pretty please~."

"Arg!" I got up angry, throwing the cushion to the floor and facing the bastard, who has moved back scared. "If I say yes you'll be quiet and won't bother me?"

"Sure!" he smiled.

"Then okay." I accepted.

"Great!" beside widen his smile, he raised his arms as a gesture of victory.

I sighted in resignation while falling onto the couch and picked up the cushion from the floor to hug it again. At least I had managed to that bastard stay quiet and let me watch the film in calm.

"Hey, Lovi…"

Five. Only five fucking minutes he had been with his mouth shut. I clenched my fists tightly, stretching them against the cushion, and I turned to him with my eyes half-closed while sending him all the hatred that was filling me in that moment.

"What?" I asked plainly.

"I know this film is very good and all of that, but how many times have you watched it?"

I felt out of place, why the hell did he ask that strange question?

"A f-few," about twenty… number above, number below, "w-why?"

"Because you're moving your lips at the same time as the dialogues take place."

Did I do that? Fuck, I always was so concentrated on the film that I have never noticed that I moved my lips unconsciously… and now the Spanish bastard would laugh at me for that little peculiarity!

"And what the hell did you do looking at me instead the movie, bastard?!" I hit him several times with the cushion. He covered his head with his hands.

"Ay, Lovi!" he complained. "I just looked at you for a moment and I noticed what you were doing… Stop it, please!"

I hit him one more time and dropped the cushion over his head. I grumbled angrily and walked to my room. I was sure the bastard wouldn't let me enjoy the film without disturbing me again.

"Lovi?" he asked surprised. "Where are you going?"

"To change clothes!" I answered angrily. "And stop calling me Lovi!"

"But, didn't you say that you were going to watch the film?"

"Not anymore!"

I changed clothes quite fast, more than everyone else would need to be able to even be as well dressed as me. When I returned to the living room, I found the bastard completely absorbed in the movie… too late now! I don't know how I could be able to contain my anger and not give him a good punch despite he deserved it, if he even heard me when I said that we could go, I had to turn the TV off for him to pay attention to me.

We stopped on the first floor in order to tell the two friends of the Spaniard that lived in that floor, the Frenchman and the macho albino. The damned bastard had convinced me to go out for a drink, but that asshole omitted the  _little_  detail that those two would come with us. Obviously, if I had known it, I wouldn't have agreed to go out, but I would have kicked Antonio out of my house and I'd have stayed so comfortably on the couch. I still had time to regret, but… it's not like I wanted to go out with those three, it's that I hadn't got myself ready in order to go down two floors and come back home!

I was walking a few steps behind that trio of friends listening the bland discussion they had about the place we should go, I didn't understand why we kept on walking if they didn't come to an agreement about the place we were heading for… what a bunch of idiots I had joined! The German left the other two and came to me, wanting to throw his arm over me, but I moved away disgustingly from him.

"Dude, I don't bite." He grabbed me by my shoulder in a gesture that seemed friendly, at least that's what I assumed according to his smile (or similar gesture) that was drawn on his face. "Come here."

"What do you want?"

"Look, I know that you and me haven't had a good start, because what you said last week about my food hurt me a lot, I prepared it with the greatest care" as if I minded. "But I'm a comprehensive person, so I understand that you have your own likes, although they aren't as great as mine. For that, so you could see how magnanimous I am, I forgive you."

"I haven't asked for your forgiveness."

"I forgive you anyway." The albino does his own thing. "Listen, I'll tell you one thing, I respect your grandfather so much and he's a man that I fucking like, but that's not important, I don't give a fuck who your grandfather, your father or your brother is. What does matter is that I trust in my friends' criteria and it turns out that our good Toño has you in very high esteem and I, as the awesome person I am, am a friend of the friends of my friends. So from this moment you have the joy of being part of the small but exclusive group of friends of the great, magnanimous and amazing Gilbert Beilschmidt, feel proud."

The last thing I expected from that egomaniac was a declaration of friendship. Well, it had been an imposition of friendship… to call it somehow. But why would I want to be friends with that egocentric German? Although he didn't give me the option of refusing either, I think the German didn't give a fuck about what I thought about establishing a friendship with him.

Laughing with a loud laugher, he gave me a couple of pats on my back that almost knocked me to the ground and we joined the other two, who were waiting for us in front of the entrance of a pub.

"What were Gil and you talking about, Lovi?" the gossip Spaniard asked me while we were approaching the bar.

"Nothing important, he just wanted me to join his sect."

As expected, the idiot of Antonio didn't catch the joke, but I wasn't going to explain it either.

"This first round is on my awesome person!" the German said when our drinks were served and we go to a table. "This is a celebration!"

"And what are we celebrating,  _mon ami_?" The Frenchman asked while we were sitting down to a table.

"Kesese… I'll let you know that, after so much time, finally next Monday the road on the bridge that's being built under my supervision will begin to be built."

I almost chocked when I heard that, that madman was building a bridge? What idiot had left an important job like that in the hands of someone who couldn't see beyond his own shadow? Mental note: never cross that bridge. The bastard and the Frenchman cheered and congratulated their friend effusively.

"Do you build bridges?" I asked surprised.

"What else could an extraordinary engineer like me do but awesome works like that?" Engineer? I had never imagined it. "You can't expect less from someone as great as me, keep that in mind."

"And you didn't invite the  _belle fleur de la Hongrie_  to celebrate?"

"Of course I did, and she answered my awesome invitation with a frying-pan hit! She'll end up deforming my head." Or making him dumber than he already is.

"What did you propose her?" Antonio asked distrustfully. Remembering that she almost split my head in two for insulting her, I guess that the albino's proposal would be something intolerable for her.

"Nothing that deserved that answer!" he defended himself.

"And didn't you celebrate with Ludwig?"

"Sure! Besides passion for engineering, in the veins of my extraordinary little brother runs the same beer-loving blood as mine, so last night we went out to celebrate drinking the best German beer until we couldn't stay standing longer, kesese…" he laughed, and the other two too. I didn't, fuck, how could I let my influential brother go with someone who drank until he fell? "What's wrong, kid?"

"I…" I stuttered. "Feliciano… with macho potato…"

"Are you worried because  _ton petit_   _frère_  has gone with Ludwig and because of what this has just said?" Fuck with the Frenchman, he does understand things fast. I nodded.

" _This_ " he pointed himself, "has a name, one as awesome as him. Don't worry, kid, West only behaves in an awesome way when he goes with me because I let my geniality get him, the rest of the time you can call him the  _dull_. Feli will be okay."

It wasn't like that calmed me down, I didn't really trust the albino's criteria.

"Changing the subject," Antonio said, "what are you going to cook tomorrow for lunch, Lovi? I can't wait to taste your food."

"Ah… well…. I don't know. I guess it will be Feliciano who will be in charge of that…"

" _Pourquoi_?" the Frenchy interrumpted. "Can't you cook maybe?"

"What do you take me for? Do you think I'm useless or what? Of course I can cook! You have never tried something better." I replied hitting the table with my fist. I can be questioned very things, but not that I can't cook, I do it and pretty well, as to lick your fingers. But my brother can do it even better, although I'll never recognize it in public. "But I'm not in charge of food, it's Feliciano. He… does it better… he does everything better…"

Damn it, my brain chose the best moment to bring out the jealousy I feel for my brother. Alcohol's things, it makes me talk about subjects I don't like to talk. I shut up drinking a sip of my drink and staying slightly crestfallen. I felt the brush of a hand between my hair and looked up.

"Come on, Lovi, don't get like that." The bastard of Antonio told me smiling. "I know that what you say it's not true." He added in a mysterious tone, winking at me.

I didn't understand what the bastard was based on to make that statement, we met only a week ago, he barely knew anything about me and even less about my brother to have a clear certainty that what I said wasn't true. However, his words raised my spirits.

With one more pair of drinks in each one's body, we left that pub. I was slightly dizzy, enough to feel like coming back home, but the other three were as fresh as a rose. In fact, they thought to continue with the binge in another place, at least the Frenchman and the German, because Antonio affirmed to be enough tired as to keep on with the party. We said goodbye at the entrance of the place.

"It wasn't necessary that you accompanied me home, bastard, you could have stayed with your buddies to continue with the party." I told Antonio, who was walking behind me, as I moved a bit to the sides while walking. "I'm not gonna get lost."

"Excuse me for doubting it, Lovi" he laughed, "but you are staggering and I have had to grab you a couple of times so you don't enter in a wrong street."

"Streets are different at night!"

He grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him, making me hit his torso. I looked up, Antonio was staring at me with his permanent smile causing me to blush.

"What are you doing, idiot?" I pushed him. "Let me go!"

"We've arrived, Lovi."

I looked around, the huge main door of the building was in front of me and I had been about to pass by. Fuck, what a way to make a fool of myself, the bastard would spend the night laughing at me. However, he didn't even say a comment about it.

We went up two floors of stairs to his flat in silence. The bastard made the feint of keep on going up behind me to my grandfather's house. I stopped him at the first step.

"Where do you think you are going, bastard?"

"I was going to accompany you to your house."

"It's just one floor up, I don't need your help, I can arrive ALONE. Good night!"

I went the stairs up running.

I took the keys out of my pocket. I tried to put the key in the lock several times, but to no avail, the door didn't stop moving, fuck! Or maybe it was me who was moving from one side to another. To top it all the light of the landing switched off, making harder the job I was dealing with.

The door of the house suddenly opened revealing on the other side the presence of a huge figure, I couldn't see his face because of the lack of light.

"CHIGIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"

I cringed, a giant stranger had entered the house and I had caught him the moment of running away, would he hurt me for it?

"Don't kill me, please!" I screamed, with my eyes closed and full of tears. "I-I'm a good Italian, I have relatives in… in… wherever you are from, don't kill me! DON'T KILL ME!"

"LOVINO!" I heard Antonio's breathless voice, as if he was running. "What happens?"

"Antonio, help me!" I begged, with my eyes still closed.

"Vee~  _fratello_ , what happens? Why are you on the floor?"

I opened my eyes and looked up when I heard the sleepy voice of Feliciano. Someone switched the light on, specifically the macho potato, who was in front of my house's door, my brother was behind him looking at me confused. Antonio was bent next to me trying to catch his breath after his run up the stairs.

I wiped away the tears that didn't come out of my eyes and tried to stand up. Antonio offered me his hand to help me, I held it and stood up slowly, the scare would have passed, but my legs were still shaking.

"A-Are you okay, Lovi?" I nodded, blushing a bit. "I heard you screaming and I came thinking that something had happened to you."

"He got scared when I opened the door." The potato bastard said.

"Who doesn't get scared when someone opens the door of his own house in the dark?" I defend myself. "By the way, what the hell are you doing in MY house at this hour, potato bastard?"

" _Fratello_!" Feliciano scolded me. "I asked Ludwig to keep me company until you or grandpa came back because I was afraid to stay alone at home."

"That's right." The potato-eater confirmed. "While we were waiting, Feliciano fell asleep on the sofa and then I heard noises on the door, I thought someone tried to enter by forcing the lock."

"I just wanted to put the key in the lock!"

"That's why I wanted to accompany you" the bastard said, "I knew you'd need help."

"I didn't need it!" I spat. "I would have managed to put the key in the lock if the potato bastard hadn't opened the door giving me an awful scare!"

"Can I know why the hell you are shouting at this hour, gang of useless?!" the tulip shouted suddenly appearing on the stairs in a T-shirt and shorts and with a crazy expression on his face that scared. "That the majority of people who live here are brainless doesn't give you the right to make a row at three o'clock in the morning, there are people who have the habit of sleeping at this hour!"

"Sorry for disturbing you, Gov." the bastard apologized while scratching the back of his neck. "We shut up now."

"I better not hear you again or you'll regret it!" he threatened pointing us with his finger.

I stuck my tongue out at him when he turned. Idiot.

Antonio and the macho potato said goodbye to us and disappeared downstairs. I slammed the door shut to screw the tulip up. I headed to my room, as expected, with Feliciano stuck to me as a limpet.

 _"Fratello_ …"

"The answer is no" I said before he asked and I separated him from me by closing the door of my room in his face.

In the end he managed to convince to let him sleep with me. I don't know why I bother in refusing, I always end up giving in to his requests.

* * *

Next morning, grandpa, that only God knows at what time he returned, came into my room full of energy, although it wasn't even twelve o'clock yet, how could he have so much vitality so early? (Yes, early, I think that getting up before noon is early). He called us at the top of his voice for us to get up and start preparing the stupid lunch for his beloved tenants.

Feliciano obeyed him immediately, but I slacked and turned around on the bed, I didn't intend to get up and much less to cook for others, I was too comfortable on the mattress hugging the pillow…

"Lovino, get up!" he commanded me while lifting the blind.

"Leave me!" I grumbled.

I covered myself with the sheet, avoiding the annoying light that came in through the window. Grandpa pulled it and took it from me. I obeyed him reluctantly, I knew that he kept on disturbing me if I didn't do what he wanted… No doubt my idiot brother has taken after him.

"You'll sleep all you want in your nap." He said smiling.

I entered annoyed in the kitchen. Feliciano was about to bite a toast that I took from his hands, at least I'd have breakfast at ease.

My grandfather prepared the dessert, Feliciano prepared the main dish and I… I took care of peeling, cutting and chopping the ingredients, stirring the sauces, cleaning what was getting dirty… let's say that I spent two hours receiving orders of what to do, as if I liked to receive orders (yes, it's a sarcasm).

I slipped away from the kitchen as soon as I heard the doorbell ringing. They were the potato-loving brothers. The albino entered making a lot of noise, as it was his custom, and his brother as serious as always saying a plain 'hello', I looked at him with all the hatred in my soul for the scare he gave me the previous night.

As I had already learnt the lesson from the previous week, I didn't even bother to close the door, the guests could come in when they wanted and sit down to the table. In just ten minutes we were almost all reunited, only one person was missing, and after fifteen minutes of waiting he still hadn't appeared.

"Where is Antonio?" grandpa asked, looking at his tenants. "He didn't have to work, did he?"

"Maybe he is still asleep." The Frenchman said.

"Toño has the bad habit of always being late." The albino added.

"That idiot was born late." The tulip said.

"Govert!" his sister scolded him, sat next to me. "Don't talk about Antonio like that."

"Here I am!" Antonio said, appearing in the room and sitting between the Frenchman and the tulip. "Were you talking about me?"

"Yes, we commented how someone can be so useless as to be late for a meeting that is held just two meters from where you live."

"Govert!" Emma scolded him again.

"Sorry for being late, I got up late and between some things and others the time caught up with me…"

"As if now that was a novelty…"

Fuck with the tulip, it seems that he had gotten up on the wrong foot and that he had stepped on a lego being barefoot, because his bad temper was worse than mine and he was taking it out on the bastard. I got the impression that he was still a bit pissed off about having woken him up the night before.

"Now that we are all" grandpa said, ending the conversation, "let's eat!"

The tulip didn't participate in the conversations during the rest of the meal, he only talked to his sister. Antonio, on the other hand, chatted normally with everybody, as if the poisoned words of his neighbor hadn't affected him.

Everybody enjoyed the lunch and congratulated my brother for the delicious dishes he had prepared. Sure, I risk my fingers cutting vegetables and the one who takes all the merit is Feliciano… what a novelty!

"I don't believe that Feli has prepared all the food by himself, I'm sure that you have helped him, haven't you?" the bastard said, winking an eye just before leaving, he seemed to have read my thoughts. He let me speechless, I only could nod. And blush.

I felt strangely happy, just for something as foolish like Antonio had considered that lunch hadn't been the sole and exclusive work of my brother. I guess I wasn't used to being taken into consideration instead of Feliciano.

Smiling slightly, I fell onto my bed and hugged the pillow, ready to sleep a long and good nap.

I woke up a couple of hours later with my stomach roaring in hunger despite how much I had eaten at lunch, but it was time for a snack and my body was demanding something sweet.

I stretched myself when I got up and I noticed that in the room there was something strange, a black long object on the desk that wasn't there when I went to bed. It was a case. I opened it slowly, nervous and swallowing hard, intuiting what it kept inside. The smell of new and freshly varnished flooded my nostrils, the tightening cords shone in front of my eyes inviting me to caress them gently with my trembling fingers… it had been years since the last time I had a violin in front of me.

A bad memory came to my mind, I closed the case with violence and frustration.

I looked for grandpa throughout the house, I found him reading in his study, he was reclining on his chair with his feet on his desk. He jumped and almost fell of the chair when I stormed in and he sat well. I put the case with the violin on the table with a thud.

"What the hell is this?" I said pointing the case.

"What do you think? It's a violin." He replied calmly.

"I know that it's a fucking violin, I've got eyes on my face! What I want to know is why the hell it was in my damn room."

"It's a present, I wanted to surprise you," Yes, he surprised me, "although I'm afraid that the reaction isn't what I expected."

"I do not play violin anymore" I crossed my eyes, "I gave it up long time ago."

"Now you'll take it back." He said seriously.

"Ha! No way, why should I do it?"

"Because I say so!" he stood up and looked at me angry, his face scared me more than the tulip's in the middle of the night. I swallowed hard. "That your foolish mother consented you to leave it doesn't mean that I'm going to let you waste a talent like yours for a stupid tantrum."

"It's not for a stupid tantrum!"

"Then give me a good reason for what you don't want to do it."

"I… I… don't…" I wasn't going to recognize the true reason in front of my grandfather. "I don't… I don't like it anymore."

"I don't accept that reason. From tomorrow on you will receive violin lessons, I have gotten you a teacher, he'll wait for you at ten o'clock." I opened my mouth to protest, but the old man didn't let me. "And there's no more valid discussion." He said.

I took the instrument and, giving my grandfather a look full of resentment, I returned to my room. I kicked the door shut and fell onto my bed, putting the case aside.

Fuck, it seems that grandpa likes to annoy me. Obviously he doesn't know the real reason why I gave up playing and I didn't intend to let him know, he'd call it foolish… Yes, I've low self-esteem, but I'm not going to admit it in front of anybody, I also have my pride!

Somebody knocked on my door and entered slowly.

"Ve~  _fratello_ , why were you arguing with grandpa?" he sat on the bed close to me. I was facing away from him.

"For nothing, idiot. Go and leave me alone!"

"Whoa!" he got surprised. He had opened the case, damn nosey. "Is this a violin?" what a stupid question, doesn't he have eyes on his face? "Where have you got it from?"

"Grandpa gave it to me as a present."

"Does that mean that you are going to play again?"

"No!" I replied without looking at him. "I don't care if grandpa wants to force me, I'm not going to play again."

"Veee~… It's a pity,  _fratello."_  He stood up and walked to the door. I still didn't look at him. "I still remember the last time I heard you play, at the school recital, you did it so well that I came out in goose flesh. You can't imagine how envious I was."

The door closed suddenly. It was then when I turned to look, my brother had gone.

That Feliciano, the living personification of perfection, told me that he was envious of me let me perplexed. His words had a deep effect on me, so much that I dared to carefully take the instrument out of the case and put it on my neck. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of its scent again to, with a trembling hand, slide the bow through the cords.

That sounded… terribly bad. But, it was normal, dammit! The instrument was new and it wasn't in tune, and I was a bit rusty… Fuck! It had been four years without playing, there are things that are forgotten. And well, getting riled had no sense, next day I'd begin to receive lessons with some idiot who would make me remember everything I needed.

Next morning, my grandfather woke me up very, very early, although I barely had time to get dressed and eat breakfast. He went to work, but before he told me that I was being waited in the living room (maybe to not try to escape). I got very surprised when I saw it was the bastard of Antonio who was there.

"No, please, tell me that you are not my violin teacher."

"I'd like it" he laughed, "but I only can play guitar. I just have come to accompany you to your teacher's house, are you ready?"

I grabbed my things and followed Antonio through the streets of the old quarter.

"Hey, bastard, why aren't you working today?"

"It's my free day."

"Fuck, two free days in a row in your busy work schedule, you should think it's Christmas or something like that." The bastard laughed. "And why are you accompanying me to class instead of using the morning to rest?"

"Well… the only ones that could accompany you were Ludwig and me, so your grandpa ask me for the favour" okay, I appreciate the company of Antonio instead of potato bastard, at least the old man thinks, "he said that he didn't want to make Ludwig have a bad time." But he thinks in a wrong way. "We're here."

We were received by a dark-haired and purple-eyed guy that looked stuck-up and was looking at us over his glasses with an expression of bother.

"You're late, idiots!"

"Hello, Rod…" Antonio scratched the back of his neck. "Always it's a pleasure to see you."

"Is this Mr. Vargas' grandson?" he spoked with a strange accent. "I'm Roderich Edelstein, your music teacher. Nice to meet you." He held out his hand to me.

"ARE YOU GERMAN?!" I shouted pointing at him.

"I'm Austrian." He said slowly.

"So you are semi-German." Antonio facepalmed himself.

"Antonio, could I know what kind of idiot you have brought?"

"Hey!" I pipped in, offended. "What did you think, you damn imbecile?"

"SILENCE!" he hit the table with a bat… no, with a radio antenna? Antonio and I stood firm for the scare. "The discipline is very important in music, so try not to repeat another outburst like this anymore, because I'm not going to consent it, understood?"

I nodded several times.

"Very well. You can go now, Antonio."

"Jooo, can't I stay to listen to Lovi?"

"NO!" said at the same time my new teacher and I.

"Well, okay." Antonio resigned. "I'll come for you at two."

"Antonio" Roderich said, "it's not necessary that you come for him, I can accompany him to his house."

"Rod, my friend, it's not for nothing, but I want Lovi to get home, not spend several hours wandering around the center." He patted his shoulder. "See you later!"

"Idiot." My stuck-up teacher said in a low voice. He turned and walked towards me. "What are you doing standing here? Come into the living room and show me what you know."

I obeyed him. I took out the violin from the case and settled into position. He sat on a chair in front of me, but…

"W-What should I play?" I asked nervously.

"Whatever you want, I'm just going to listen to you to evaluate your abilities. So let's start."

The Austrian's attentive look on me made me feel more nervous than I already was. Fuck, and I didn't know what I could play. Feliciano's words of praise came to my mind and I decided to play that same music as the last time.

Roderich remained silent for several minutes, staring at me with that purple and cold look, how long did he plan to make me wait to hear his assessment? He stood up and smiled a faint smile of satisfaction.

"You have talent, but you lack technique."

I was excited. That meant that… I hadn't done it so bad! I felt proud and satisfied with myself.

And then the real class started.

Roderich was a very strict and perfectionist teacher, he called me idiot when I made a mistake or he hit the table with his last model baton (radio antenna). He forced me to review the most basic knowledge of music and about the violin, including how to put the fingers (because he said I did it wrong) and how to grab the instrument.

By the time Antonio arrived and we finished the class, three long and strenuous hours later, the fingers of my left hand hurt me so much for stepping on the strings that I could feel them throbbing and releasing fire.

"I want you to practice this for tomorrow." He gave me a score, he should be dreaming if he thought that I was going to spend the afternoon rehearsing. "Antonio, could you come with me? I'd like to talk to you in private."

The bastard went happily with him to the next room, Roderich, on the contrary, didn't seem happy at all. I couldn't hear what they said, those assholes spoke in a very low voice, quite an achievement for the noisy Spaniard. Finally, the Austrian, with trembling hands, gave Antonio a sealed envelope that he kept safely.

"Hey, Lovi, do you want us to go eat?" the bastard asked once we were out of my stuck-up teacher's house. "I know a good place near here."

"Are you treating?"

"Sure!"

"Then okay."

I wasn't going to say no to a free meal. And besides, we didn't have to walk so much to reach the place, it was in the back street. We sat to the tables on the street.

"And well, how was the first day, Lovi?"

"My fingers hurt." I said shortly. "A lot."

"Poor boy." He caressed my hand. I withdrew it. "Sometimes Roderich is too strict and intransigent, but he is the best at teaching music, that's why your grandfather insisted so much that he was the one who gave you lessons."

"One moment, did you say that my grandfather insisted that he was the one who gave me lessons?" I put the pieces together. "Did all those meetings with the old man have anything to do with this?"

"Of course, what did you think? Your grandfather told me that he wanted to surprise you and as I had the week a little freer and he was too busy he asked me to take care of looking for the best violin there was and to convince Roderich to give you lessons. Don't think it was an easy task, especially the latter, Rod is very reluctant to accept students in his classes, always makes a test to know their musical skills before giving them yes. But I managed to convince him to accept you!" he stuck his chest out with pride. Surely the Austrian gave him yes for being a bore.

"He made me a test too. As soon as you left."

"And what was his verdict?"

"He said I have talent." I admitted proudly, although I omitted the lack of technique.

"I expected no less from you." He admitted with a glowing smile.

I smiled shyly. And I blushed, a lot, I didn't understand how a guy that barely knew me could have so much faith in me when even the closest to me hadn't trusted me so much.

"How cute you are when you blush!" he laughed.

Okay, now I understand it. Antonio is an idiot. But he's an idiot who managed to cheer me up.

"Moron" I threw a piece of bread to his head, "I'm not cute."

"Auch, don't waste food."

Resignedly, I brought to my mouth the next piece of bread I had prepared to throw.

"Hey, Lovi, I was wondering…" who knows what had crossed his mind. "Why did you decide to play violin out of all the instruments? Or is it that your parents forced you?"

"I don't remember." I lied. I did remember, but I was embarrassed to tell. The bastard made a face of not believing me. "Do you remember the reason of all your damn decisions?"

"Of the important ones, yes."

"Oh, yes? So tell me, why the hell did you decide to work in a clothes store when it's obvious that you don't have any style in dressing?" he pouted and made puppy eyes, it seemed that I had offended him. "Fuck, don't look at me like that and admit it, you wear the first thing you catch from the wardrobe, it's obvious."

"It's true." He admitted smiling again. "Let's say that I get the job by chance, I needed a job to pay for college expenses and I was offered a position."

"You were offered a position? How is it that you were offered a position?"

"Yes, actually I was only accompanying Emma," I felt a little pang in the stomach, "she was who wanted to work in that store. And in the end the two of us were hired!"

Nobody can't be luckier than this damn bastard, he is hired by chance and besides with the hot blondie. The same as me, who worked in fifteen different restaurants in Rome during last year and each one of my bosses and partners were worse than the previous ones.

"And why the hell are you still working there and with the kids on the beach instead of doing what you studied for? By the way, what did you study?"

"Children's teaching." He answered completely happy. I got surprised, but I don't know why, if Antonio is like a child, that work suits him.

"And why aren't you working in a fucking school?!"

"It's not easy to access. Besides…" he remained silent for some seconds and then smiled in a relaxed way "I don't want to work in a school."

"And then why the heck did you study that?"

"Because I like to work with children and… well… I have a dream…"

"What dream?" I tried not to sound interested in knowing it, but the bastard didn't mind, his gaze was full of illusion for the question.

"I want to open a daycare and be my own boss!" he replied enthusiastically. "Although at the moment I don't have the means to do it, but I know that sooner or later I'll get it."

That is what is called being optimist. I felt I bit of jealousy of the bastard, he had a clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life…

"Well, Lovi, now it's your turn. Tell me why you decided to play violin."

"No."

"But I have answered to all your questions!" he complained and made puppy eyes again. I turned my face away. "I've even told you my dream! You are one of the few that knows it."

Damn fucking manipulative Spanish bastard, he got to convince me again to do what he asked me.

"If you laugh at me because of what I'm going to tell you, I'll kill you." I threatened pointing him with my finger. "My grandmother played violin. One day, when Feliciano and I were children, grandpa showed us her violin and told us stories about her. Fuck, he talked so fondly and so proud of her while stroking that instrument that I wanted him to feel the same way for me too and… so I thought that the best way to get it was learning to play."

The bastard didn't laugh. He stared at me in silence, spellbound and with a tender smile on his lips that made me blush and make me nervous, it wasn't usual to see the Spaniard so quiet.

"W-What? I know it's a stupid reason, but in the end it turned out that I was good at it and… Fuck! I was only seven years and…"

"Lovino" he interrupted me, "you should listen to your grandfather talk about you."


	7. No money, no party

_Chapter 7: No money, no party_

 

Having class with Roderich Edelstein was a real pain in the ass. Although the guy had managed in a couple of weeks that my level with the violin resembled the one I had when I gave it in (without forgetting, of course, my admirable effort), standing his incessant scolds and that he called me idiot every time I made a mistake required I gather a patience that I didn’t think I possessed for not replying him badly and it made the hours of class seemed eternal for me.

“Enough!” My teacher shouted at me, hitting his radio antenna on a table while I was playing a piece. “Stop playing, idiot!”

“What? Why?” I snorted, putting the instrument down. “What have I done now?”

“You would know if you had listened to me. What was the last thing I told you yesterday?”

“Goodbye?”

“Don’t get smart on me, idiot!” he hit again his radio antenna against the table. “I told you to practice at home the score I gave you, the same as the previous days. And have you obeyed me?”

“Of cour…”

“No, of course not.” He said. “Don’t try to take me for a fool, I know you haven’t obeyed me any day. I have a very good hearing and, although you advance quickly thanks to your talent, you don’t do it as fast as you could due to the little interest you show outside class.”

“I spend four hours here playing no stop!” I justified myself. “I need to rest, my fingers hurt.”

“No more excuses. I think you were nineteen years old, but you behave like a kid of nine, so I’ll treat you like one.” He pulled out a chair from under the table. “Put the violin away and sit here.”

I obeyed and walk to Roderich a little nervous, the twisted expression of his face and his crossed arms didn’t make me have a good feeling, in fact it reminded me so much of the attitude that my mother showed when she was going to reprimand me. He pulled out a bundle of white sheets and a pen. I looked at him without understanding.

“Write ‘ _I will obey the orders of Mr. Edelstein without questioning them’_ …”

“WHAT?!”

“…over and over again until I tell you to stop,” he continued, “numbering each phrase and with a clear and legible handwriting if you don’t want me to make you repeat it, have you understood?”

I inflated my cheeks and, with narrowed eyes, I glanced him with pure hatred as any response. I bowed my head and focused on the boring and repetitive task I had been commended by the Austrian, who played the piano in the meantime.

I spent one entire hour writing the damn phrase, I wasted two sheets on both sides. When he told me to stop, it was time to come back home, so I picked up the violin case and walked to the door.

“Where do you think you are going?” he stopped me. “The lesson hasn’t finished yet.”

“But it’s two o’clock, it’s time to go.”

“Not today. Come back here and take the violin out, we’re going to recover the hour we have lost due to your indiscipline.”

“But it’s lunch time!” I complained. “I’m hungry!”

“Haven’t you learnt anything from what you have had to write?” he looked angry. “Maybe do you need another hour of punishment? But keep in mind that then I will not allow you to leave until four o’clock, because we’re are going to recover the hour of playing you owe me today.”

The fucking Austrian didn’t think twice when it came to imposing punishments, he didn’t care the hour or how hungry I were if he managed to apply his strict discipline. I mentally cursed the idiot Roderich during that hour he forced me to be in his house playing… and without complaining.

I came back home hungry and in a rage. I let out part of my anger against every door that was in my way while insulting my teacher, I know he wouldn’t listen, but at least I expected his ears to ring. Grandpa came to meet me, I don’t know if he was worried about my condition or about the doors I had slammed without compassion.

“Lovino, is everything okay? Why have you arrived so late today?”

I ignored his questions. The only thing I wanted in that moment was to fill my stomach with the dish of carbonara that Feliciano had kept into the microwave. The old man entered the kitchen after me, waiting patiently for an answer.

“What happened, Lovino? You have come back very late from class and in a worse mood than usual."

Great, now it turns out that I’m always in a bad mood. I growled.

“Lovino…”

“Roderich is an asshole! I have come back so late because that imbecile has punished me…”

“What did you do?” he asked, curious.

“Nothing!”

“You have had to do something, nobody is punished for nothing.”

If what he wanted was to make me angrier, no doubt the old man was getting it. First he told me I’m always in a bad mood and now he call me liar, why the hell didn’t he believe in what I was saying? Precisely Roderich had punished me for doing nothing, nothing that he ordered me to do in MY FREE TIME.

“Yes, going to his damn classes, that’s what I have done!” I said. “I wouldn’t have any damn problem if you hadn’t forced me to waste my time on them!”

I got up and locked myself in my room slamming the door.

 _Maledizione!_ I don’t know how I do it, but sooner or later I end up arguing with grandpa, he always does or says something that makes me angry, he must regret having brought me from Italy. Although I may be wrong,  Antonio planted the seed of doubt on me when told me that I should listen to my grandfather talking about me, but honestly I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the old man thought of me, because if it was a good thing, why didn’t he tell me?, and if it was something bad… I preferred not to know it.

And talking about the bastard, he kept on coming home almost every evening, not for meeting grandpa, but to force me, somehow, to go to take something out there, what could be limited to drink a pair of summer red wines in any terrace or be extended until the dinner. However that day he wasn’t going to come, as he didn’t the day before, because he had been called to work in a restaurant… or something like that he told me.

But of course I wasn’t going to get rid of the bore Spaniard so easily, he had to be noticed one way or another.

That evening, still quite annoyed by the Austrian’s punishment and by the argument with grandpa, I decided to obey the instructions of my teacher (not for pleasure, but because I didn’t want to get another punishment) and took out the score he gave me before I left. I knew that song, it was a _Venetian_ _Rondò_.

I concentrated on the melody I was creating with the violin, until the voice of certain bastard who was singing the song I was playing reached my ears through the window which looked out onto the patio.

I suddenly stopped playing and went to the window.

“Stop inventing such a stupid lyrics for the rondo, bastard!” I shouted angrily, the imbecile had distracted me.

“Hello, Lovi!” he greeted me happily, sticking his head out of the window and looking up. “Didn’t you like the song?”

“Obviously, NO!” I spat. “Shut your fucking trap, it’s your fault that I can’t get concentrated, fuck! And don’t call me Lovi!”

I went back inside and snorted a couple of times before taking the instrument back in my hands.

I started the melody again, but if at some point I thought the damn bastard would stop annoying because I had shouted him a bit through the window… I should receive a price for my ingenuity. Apparently the idiot Antonio knew too how to play the song and he should think it was funny to accompany me with his guitar, musically speaking, until the end of the song.

Snorting, I put the violin on the desk. I left my room like a bull, ready to go to the bastard’s apartment to tell him a few home truths for not stopping disturbing me over and over while I was practicing.

However, something stopped me. Feliciano was leaping towards me with his typical and silly smile and with his eyes so full of illusion as it seemed that sparkles were coming out of them.

“Vee~… _Fratello_ , so beautiful!” he clung to my neck. “It’s been a while since the last time I heard you play, it has been wonderful!” although I love to listen to my brother’s compliments, I was sure that Roderich would laugh at Feliciano’s opinion and raise thousand objections to my interpretation. “I loved the rondò played a duet, why don’t you do it again?”

“It wasn’t played a duet, idiot!” I yelled at idiot Feliciano, pushing him away from me. “And don’t dream that you will hear me again today!”

Because I didn’t intend to try to practice again, surely somebody would disturb me. So I sat on the couch of the living room and spent there the rest of the evening, watching the boring Spanish summer programming, which, next day, cost me a new reprimand from Roderich after listening to me playing the piece he ordered me to practice.

“It seems that whatever I tell you goes in one ear and out of the other.” He was standing in front of me, softly tapping his _modern extendable baton_ against the palm of his hand repeatedly. “Is that what I made you write yesterday didn’t serve you?”

“Of course it did!” I said, offended. “I was practicing for…”

“Don’t lie to me!” he hit the table. “The notes sound at the wrong time and squeak in my ears, you didn’t practice.”

“I did! What happens is that the Spanish bastard I have as a neighbor didn’t stop disturbing me over and over again during the entire time I was practicing and…”

“Come here and sit down.” He interrupted me and pulled out the chair from under the table.

Shit, punished again.

I obeyed and approached slowly to my teacher, who pulled out a bundle of white sheets and a pen.

“Write _I will stop inventing excuses to justify my indiscipline_ over and over again until I tell you to stop, numbering each phrase and with a clear and legible handwriting if you don’t want me to make you repeat it, have you understood?”

I frowned at him. As if it couldn’t be understood, if he had released exactly the same speech as the previous day, with the difference that the sentence to write was different. I bowed my head and focused on the boring task I had been commended, cursing mentally with every word I wrote to the prissy Austrian, who was expressing his irritation playing Chopin on the piano, and to the stupid bastard of Antonio, because it was his fault I was being punished.

And having to copy hundred times the same sentence wasn’t the worst, but that Roderich would force me to recover the lost time by postponing the time of leaving. That bastard would find funny to make me go hungry!

However, fortune smiled at me and made his appearance in the Austrian’s house in form of a bell ringing when the extra hour of class had just started. It was Antonio and Emma, they had come to pick me up and go for lunch all together.

“Lovino can’t go yet” Roderich said to them, “our class is not over yet.”

“Isn’t supposed that your class finish at two?” Antonio asked in a childish tone. “It’s already more than two, it’s time to eat!”

“Not today. Lovino is fulfilling a punishment” I blushed and ducked my head embarrassed, that my teacher had punished me as a kid was something I didn’t want anybody to know, “and he won’t leave until I allow him. So you’d better leave.”

“Don’t be so bad, Rod, what has poor Lovi done to be punished?”

“It’s more what he has not done, precisely to obey me and practice at home the scores I gave him.”

“I heard him playing.”

“Yes, in fact, you know what?” Emma said, “yesterday evening Lovino and Toni played a little duet concert, it was beautiful.”

I felt proud that Emma would have liked my interpretation, even if it really hadn’t been as she thought, but I wouldn’t be the one who say her was wrong.

“Really?” Roderich asked incredulously, turning his head towards me to look at me with bewilderment, perhaps because the blonde’s version didn’t match with I had told him in the first moment. He sighed with resignation. “All right, Lovino, you can pick up your things and go.”

I couldn’t believe it, I had gotten rid of the punishment! I took my things as fast as I could and stayed under the doorframe of the house trying to hurry the other two, just in case my teacher regretted his decision at the last moment.

“Would you like to come eat with us, Rod?” Antonio asked.

“Thank you very much, but no.”

“Come on, man.” The bastard insisted. Couldn’t he accept a no as an answer? What a bore. “We’re going near here, then, if you want, we can have a coffee together and I accompany you so you won’t get lost.”

 Roderich twisted his face and his violet eyes threw a look of deep resentment to the smiling Antonio. Emma was laughing softly.

“Leave now, please.” He said politely. "And you, Lovino, try to practice this weekend, because next time I will not be so benevolent with you.”

I raised my thumb in response. Roderich rolled his eyes and closed the door behind us.

We sat down to a table in the shade at the terrace of a nearby place full of tourists who were eating and drinking greedily while they were roasting under the sun. There was no doubt that Antonio knew the city almost as well as the palm of his hand because the place, despite its appearance of a grotty den, served delicious dishes, most of them prepared with tomato (fruit for which the bastard and I felt authentic passion).

Emma’s presence at lunch seemed odd to me, not because I didn’t like her company, which I actually loved, but because maybe I had gotten used to having the bastard’s attention only for me and I didn’t want to share it with anyone… It could be said that I thought selfishly, but, fuck, Antonio was the first person who felt a special attachment for me and I didn’t want to lose that.

“Hey, Lovi,” the bastard said after wiping the rest of tomato sauce on his plate, “if Roderich is too severe with you, don’t hesitate to tell me, I’ll go and tell him a thing or two if necessary.”

Although sometimes the Spaniard paid me more attention than necessary… he treated me like a fucking kid!

“Toni, darling” Emma said before I could answer the bastard. But, one moment, why the hell did she call him “darling”? I felt a pinch in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t think you have to interfere in Roderich’s way of working, he has his own methods. Leave him alone, he has already had enough.”

“I know. I don’t want to interfere, but you know how he is and the character he has, all I want is that he doesn’t give Lovi a hard time with his strict discipline.”

“I’m not a damn kid, bastard. I don’t need you to keep an eye on me all the time.”

“Do you see, Toni?” Emma placed her hand on the bastard’s, causing him to return his puppy eyes to her and smile. “Lovino doesn’t need you to stand so over him.”

To the pressure in my stomach it was added a lump in my throat. Maybe was there something between those two beyond friendship? They were only assumptions, because there were hardly any signs of loving affection, but… Shit, I was jealous! Although, frankly, I wouldn’t be able to say about exactly what, if I felt that my chances of conquering Emma were decreasing by the bastard’s fault or that she got all my _friend’s_ attention.

* * *

Spending Saturday night alone at home lying on the couch hugging a cushion while watching on TV an absurd romantic comedy (what a shit I was watching) was the most pathetic way to end a day that, in general, hadn’t been so bad.

I had slept until lunch time, eaten lasagna and then I had spent the afternoon with Feliciano, we went shopping together to the mall, it’s one of the few things we have in common besides sleeping a lot.

But now my idiot brother had gone out there with his super friend the muscled potato bastard and I had stayed at home bored like an oyster. And it’s not that Feliciano didn’t invite me to go with him and his little friend, but I passed to go anywhere with the potato-lover, it was enough for me to put up with his beloved and egocentric brother, my _self-proclaimed_ friend, some of the time I went out with Antonio.

Damn! I remembered the bastard. We didn’t see each other since we said goodbye the day before at the door of his flat after lunch, what would he be doing?... Fuck! Why did I wonder what that idiot would be doing? It’s not like I had any interest in it… or yes, well, maybe a little… but it’s that that damn asshole had made me get used to his almost daily visits! I guess he would be working (then people complain that there is unemployment, normal, all the jobs are monopolized by the bastard) or with Emma… something contracted inside me when this idea came to my head.

Some knocks on the door took me out of my thoughts. Maybe it would be the idiot of Feliciano who would have forgotten the keys, although in my opinion it was too early for him to return, just half past twelve.

“Hello, Lovi~!”

The smiling bastard of Antonio was greeting me happily with his hand. I can’t deny that I was surprised (and also glad, although I’d never admit it) by his visit.

“What are you doing he-here, bastard?”

“What do you think? It’s Saturday night, let’s go have some drinks!” he said effusively going inside and looking around. “Are you alone?”

“Eh, yes… Grandpa had a business dinner or something like that” I hope it wasn’t a euphemism, “and Feliciano go with his friend the giant potato-lover. And you…? Weren’t you with Emma?” the question came out alone, unconsciously, I guess because I had been thinking about it before Antonio appeared. I blushed a bit. I felt the urge of hitting myself against the wall for not being able to stand the curiosity.

“With Emma?” he asked, surprised. My heart (I don’t know why) jumped with joy when I saw his reaction. “And why should I be with her? Have I missed something?” he cocked his head. “I have just finished working and…”

“No… forget it, it was mere curiosity.” I feigned indifference. “I’m going to change, I’ll come right now.”

I practically flew to my room and went back, ready, before Antonio even had time to sit down and wait for me.

The Frenchman and the albino were waiting for us in the pub we went to and, judging by the amount of glasses that were piling up on the table, they had been there for a long time, although they didn’t look like they were drunk (what kind of liver do this guys have?).

“At last!” the Frenchman said, getting up. We were thinking about going to your house to get you out of the bed, Toni.”

“How exaggerated!” Antonio answered laughing as we sat down. The Frenchy sat next to me. “I told you I would be late, I just got out of work.”

“Working as much as you do can’t be very good, _mon ami_." The Frenchman’s voice had a tone of genuine concern, but Antonio simply smiled at him as he always did. “And what about you, _mon petit cher_?” he put an arm over my shoulders. Arg, what a disgusting feeling! My face should have been a poem.

“Yes, kid” the albino said, “tell us how your classes are going with the stupid aristocrat. The other day I wanted to ask you, but sometimes my awesome mind suffers gaps and I forgot it.”

“Gaps? I’d rather say oceans, _mon ami_ , especially if certain Hungarian doctor is present and the subject in question is related to your archenemy and rival in love."

The macho albino was in love with Elizaveta? Wow, it was surprising to discover that that egomaniac was able to feel love, or whatever it was, for someone else but himself.

“Francis, two things: first, miss _tomboy_ has studied medicine, but she needs two or three years more to be a doctor; and second, that damn aristocrat is NOT my rival in love, Elizaveta left him, he has no chance of getting back together with her, so I have no reason to compete with him.”

“The Austrian and the crazy Hungarian were a couple?” I was surprised.

“Hey, you, brat!” the German spat suddenly. “The only one here who insults the _tomboy_ is me, so take care not to let me listen to you again or I assure you that you’ll fell all the fury of my amazing fist.”

Fucking albino, the other day he proclaimed himself as my friend and now he threatens me for saying that his chick is round the bend, he must have some kind of personality disorder. I was about to get up to respond to his provocation, but Antonio’s hand on my chest stopped me. His other hand rested on the German’s shoulder urging him to remain calm.

“Come on, Gilbert, take it easy.” Antonio said. “Lovi didn’t want to offend you, really?” he looked at me. I nodded. “See?”

“Ok, it doesn’t matter, just for showing you how great I am” or asshole, depending on how you look at it, “not like that conceited aristocrat.”

“It seems incredible that back in the day you got along.” The bastard said.

“Yeah” the albino said, annoyed, “I even took the trouble of taking him in my awesome home when Eli broke up with him and threw him out of the house, but the asshole didn’t stop touching my balls with his stinginess trying to impose me his stupid rules of conduct in MY OWN house, I wasn’t going to stand that!”

“And then I took him in” Antonio said, “but he didn’t stay long.”

“Because you are a spendthrift, Toño.”

“I wanted to take him in” the Frenchman said, “but, for some reason I don’t know, he doesn’t like me so much… What a pity, I would have repaired his broken heart…”

“Stop dreaming, beardy.” The albino said.

“Anyway, being so close to Eli wasn’t good for him, he was still… well, he is still in love with her.” Antonio said.

“And why did they break up?” I asked.

The three shrugged.

“I have a theory about that.” the Frenchman said, taking on a mysterious air. “She got angry because he didn’t want to volunteer for her urology practice, impeding her to practice with him a prostate exam.”

The three started laughing. I didn’t understand the joke.

“What is a prostate exam?” I asked with all my fucking ingenuity.

“Don’t you know?” the Frenchman said, approaching dangerously his face with a perverted expression on it to mine. “Whenever you want, I’ll make you one…”

“FRAN!” Antonio hit the table and got up, his expression was cold and his eyes emanated angry. It was scary.

“Keep calm, _amour_ ” he got away from me, “I was just joking.”

“But what is it?” I repeated, curious, looking at Antonio, who relaxed his gesture and adopted his normal attitude. "Explain it to me.”

“Eh… Well…”

The other two were still laughing softly. Antonio blushed a bit. He indicated me to approach him and explained it to my ear. I got redder and redder with every word of the explanation, how could someone be so perverted? Antonio had his face very red too when he finished telling me what the exam was about.

Full of rage and disgust, I got up and turned to the Frenchman, I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and made him get up too.

“Damn perverted Frenchy!” I shouted. “You can put your fucking finger in…! AGH!”

I was completely disgusted, but I was still clenching my fists with the Frenchy’s shirt clasped between them. On the other hand, he didn’t seem to mind being at the mercy of my anger, in fact he was not even looking at me but at a point near the main door.

“Oh, _mon Dieu_!”

I turned my head to see where he was looking at, but there was nothing interesting, just a dressed blond guy with eyebrows that covered most of his forehead. It seemed that he had just entered.

“Loose, brat!” he smacked me on my hands to let him go. One moment, did that asshole just call me ‘brat’? That one won’t leave the bar with all his teeth. “Let me go, I say!”

He had become very serious. I did what he asked for and I sat down again, confused. He smoothed his shirt, staying up. The other two were very serious too and were looking at the blond who was coming to us. There was tension in the air.

“Oh, _my God_!” the newcomer put his hand on his head. “Why the hell out of all the damn pubs in this city I have precisely to come into the one you are in?”

“Call it destiny, _mon amour_.” A crooked smile curled his lips. “How are you, Arthur? It’s been a long time.”

“It would have been more if it was up to me” he snapped, “but I had to dock here.”

“So are you already a captain?” the Frenchman feigned surprise. “Congratulations, _cher_!”

“So it is. And are you still a wine bastard or was it just a passing phase in your life?”

“What are you saying about a passing phase? I’m the best oenologist you are going to find in all your life and know, _mon amour_ , that I work in the best winery in the area, so come to my house when you want and I’ll give you a bottle.” He winked. “I still live in the same address, I guess you know it, with the difference that now I reside in the apartment that was yours.”

“No way will I put a foot in that place.” He added with repugnance. “And what about you two? I read that the monstrosity that crosses the bay is yours.” He told the albino.

“Monstrosity? It’s the best engineering structure you’ll see in your whole damn life, and you’d like any of the bridges that cross your dear Thames to be half as amazing as the one I’m building here.”

“I work on a ship, I go on a magnificent engineering structure every day, idiot.” The Englishman replied (I deduced it from the Thames). “What about you, Antonio? Did you finish your ‘formative cycle’ of teaching or your brain isn’t good enough for finishing such an easy degree?”

“Your fucking mother, _eyebrows_ , I swear I’ll kill you.” Antonio got up ready to jump over the table to hit that Arthur guy, who moved backwards, but the albino held the bastard on time.

“As irascible as ever.” The browed said, laughing. Irascible Antonio? Who was he talking about? “And who’s this?" He pointed at me contemptuously. “His face seems familiar to me.”

“Don’t you see the resemblance? It’s Romu’s grandson!”

“Ah…” he looked at me from feet to head. “Yeah. Well, I leave you. I hope we won’t see again.”

“Same.” Antonio and the albino said together with weariness.

The browed blond headed for the bar followed by the glances of Gilbert and Antonio, who threw him daggers, and the malicious one of the Frenchman, who didn’t take his eyes off him. He sat next to me again, a particular lascivious smile formed on his lips.

“How nice is your friend.” I said sarcastically.

“He’s not our friend.” Antonio said with a hint of hate in his voice, which surprised me, since the bastard is mister sympathy and likes everyone. “He’s a moron.”

“We had an _affaire_.” The Frenchman confessed. I spat my drink when heard that.

“Fuck, Francis, don’t remind me” Antonio said with horror, “we lived together then and I found him in the morning as God brought him into the world coming out from your room. I still have nightmares with that image.”

“It was just the night before he left” the Frenchman ignored the complaints of the other two and continued to remember, “first we made out on the beach and then we continued the party at home. We haven’t see each other since then… This must be the work of destiny, no doubt.”

“Destiny my foot, Fran!” the German said. “He’s a ship’s captain and there is a damn port here, he’ll be here a couple of days and he’ll disappear again. That’s all.”

“Yeah… Then I think I’ll go to remember good times… I mean, to bother him a bit… I mean, to…”

And he went with the Englishman, who welcomed him shouting and with a face of disgust.

“Fuck, no wonder he hates the Frenchy” I said, “but what did he do to you two so you have that mutual hatred?”

“Bothering us all he could” the German answered, “specially Toño.” He put an arm over him.

“Don’t remind me.” Said the bastard bitterly. “Damn idiot…”

“I know! Next time we will sing him _Yellow submarine_ , which will be what his boat will become if he sail it.” The albino tried to cheer him up, with a stupid idea in my opinion, but that got a slight laugh from the bastard.

No doubt the atmosphere of partying had gone to hell, it was enough to see the faces of my two companions to realize it. We finished our drinks and decided to leave.

That’s when the night really got dark for me.

I grabbed my wallet and… what the fuck?! I didn’t have enough money to pay the bill for what I had drunk. I searched and searched some lost bill in all my fucking wallet, but nothing, I didn’t have an extra euro. I was stunned contemplating poverty in my own hands.

“What happens, Lovi?” The bastard asked me. “Are you daydreaming?”

“Eh… no… I don’t have enough…” I showed him the empty wallet. “I don’t have more money.”

“Ah, don’t worry, man! I’m not gonna let you stay here washing glasses," he joked, ruffled my hair and paid the waiter, “I treat you, no problem.”

But there was a problem, a very big and fucking problem, at least for me. It wasn’t that I carried an insufficient amount of money in the wallet because of a forgetfulness, but that the amount I brought from Italy (the few savings I kept in my moneybox) had been shrinking little by little until there’s practically nothing left.

Dammit, I had to get money somehow or I’d have to say goodbye to go shopping and to go out constantly with the bastard, even if he didn’t mind to treat me once, twice, or infinite times, I didn’t think it was right to take advantage of his generosity… Fuck! It’s not that I cared about him or his economy, but the guy worked more than a Chinese to carry out everything and achieve his dream.

The only chance I saw of getting money for my expenses quickly was to ask my grandfather, I didn’t think he would deny it to me, wouldn’t he? But throughout my life I had never need to ask anyone for money, I always got it by my own means, and having to turn to grandpa to obtain it was a bit humiliating.

However, it’s supposed that if someone has two people under his protection, in this case Feliciano and me, the person in question will take care of all their needs, including economic ones, so it could be said that grandpa was obliged to cover my needs. It was enough to stand in front of him and say something like “Old man, I need money, give it to me”… what a phrase of a petty thief, can someone be more pathetic? I feel the urge of hitting myself for thinking about something like that, I wouldn’t get anything like that, maybe that my grandfather send me packing.

And in these thoughts I was immersed on Sunday afternoon while pretending to watch a fantastic movie on TV with Feliciano, who was dozing next to me on the couch  (and he was the one who wanted to watch the film in question, I guess to remember his planet).

“Lovino” grandpa called me seriously, that wasn’t a good sign, and in a low voice for not waking up my brother, “come with me a moment.”

I pushed Feliciano the sleeper aside, because his head was resting on my shoulder. He didn’t wake up. I followed grandpa to his study.

“What happens?” I asked with tediousness after closing the door. “What have I done now?”

“Do you feel remorse?” he asked curiously. “What have you done?”

“Nothing!” I exclaimed, ofended at being accused of… I don’t know of what, because the old man had turned an innocent question into a kind of confession. “It’s you who has called me, what do you want?”

He didn’t answer immediately. From a drawer of his desk he took out an envelope and several fifty-euro bills that put into it. I was stunned contemplating the orange color disappearing within the white, it was incredible that what I needed was so within my reach.

“This money is for you to give it to Roderich tomorrow, it’s the payment for his classes.” I think he said, I wasn’t listening to him. “Lovino?” grandpa snapped his fingers in front of my nose and pulled me out of the trance. “What’s wrong? I was talking to you and it seemed you weren’t listening to me.”

“No… nothing…” I answered absently.

“Lovino, don’t lie to me.” He crossed his arms and adopted a serious expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Eeeh… well…” I looked alternately at his eyes and at the envelope that was still in his hands. I had to tell him, it was the perfect opportunity. “I… need money…”

He frowned and looked at me inquisitively without saying a word. He was making me nervous.

“What do you want it for?”

“What do I want it for?” I spat. “What do you think I’m going to want it? I have expenses, you know?”

He made a face of annoyance, very similar to the ones that Roderich showed me daily, I think he didn’t like the way I answered him, I just hope he won’t imitate the Austrian’s punishments.

“How did you get money in Italy?”

I didn’t expect that question.

During the last year in Italy I was working. Yes, I worked in fifteen different restaurants in Rome, all with owners who verged the extreme bullshit, because there was no one that allowed me to develop my skills as a waiter without raising objections.

Moreover, my parents gave Feliciano and me some money weekly, which, although it wasn’t so much, let me cover some expenses. And well… if sometimes I needed more and I didn’t have other way to get it, I pilfered some bill to my father from his wallet, the idiot thought that it had been my mother (who did it too) and, due to he’s scared of her, he didn’t dare to speak. But of course, with my grandfather I would never think about doing something like that, the old man is not idiot, although sometimes you could think otherwise.

“I had a pay and I worked.” I finally answered after my mental reflection.

“What was your job?”

“I was a waiter.”

“Where?”

“Do you want the list?” I puffed my cheeks, so much questioning was starting to bother me.

“There’s no harm in having some references.”

“My references are a fucking shit, my bosses were half retarded, for not saying they were completely retarded, and my colleagues screwed me around, do you want to know anything else? They wouldn’t say anything good about me even if they were bribed.”

The old man started laughing loudly, making me confused. I don’t know what he found so funny in what I had just said, I didn’t see it.

“Very well, Lovino,” he wiped the tears from his eyes, “don’t worry. Tomorrow I’ll talk to the manager of my restaurant to give you a job as a waiter on the night shift, so it won’t interfere with the violin lessons.”

“But… WHAT?!” I shouted, surprised. “I have asked you for money, not for a damn job!”

“You won’t think I was going to give you money just like that, just for coming and asking me, right? As if I was a bank…”

“And isn’t it supposed to be what grandparents do?”

“I don’t know what kind of grandfather does that, but I assure you that I don’t.”

“I’m sure if Feliciano were the one asking for it, you’d give it to him.” I said softly, bending my face and crossing my arms.

Shit, I had screwed it up once again. Grandpa heard my comment and remained silent for a while, I think I offended him. Even though I wasn’t looking at him, I felt his eyes on me. He grabbed my chin and forced me to lift my face.

“You and your brother are different” he told me seriously, although he didn’t looked angry. I clenched my fists, preparing myself to hear how I was going to be compared with my perfect brother once more, as it always happened, “both have virtues and defects, but doesn’t mean that one is better or worse than the other. You are both my grandsons and, although the relationship I have with each other of you is different, I love you both equally.”

And before I could react, the old man wrapped his arms around me against my will.

“The things we want must be earned with effort, Lovino, otherwise we get wrong ideas about what we really deserve.”

He separated from me and smiled. He forced me to take the envelope to give it to Roderich and then he took out a twenty euro bill from his wallet and put it in my hand.

“Take this, so you can see I’m not that bad.”

He kissed me on my forehead and ruffled my hair before my total bewilderment before leaving laughing from his study. My grandfather was a walking enigma.

I looked at the blue bill and smiled slightly.

I had gotten more than I expected.


	8. Mess à la française

_Chapter 8: Mess à la française_

 

With my arms crossed, my cheeks inflated and frowning, that is, showing my best expression of discontent, I was on my way to work contemplating the maritime landscape of the city through the window of my grandfather’s car, being accompanied by him, who was driving, and the idiot of Feliciano, who was humming a song happily in the back. Despite my repeated complaints and refusals, both insisted on accompanying me and being the first customers I served in the restaurant.

The only good thing about coming with me was that I didn’t have to take the bus. Yes, unfortunately I had to go there using the damn public transport (better than nothing), because the restaurant was far from home, specifically on the other side of the city. In fact, when my grandfather took me to visit the place three days before to know all the details of my job, I discovered with surprise that the place wasn’t unknown to me, it was the same place where I had lunch with Antonio the day we met on the beach.

Grandpa parked the car and the three of us went into the restaurant. It was still early to serve the customers, but for the old man for being the owner of the place the schedules weren’t applied, so he and Feliciano settled into a table as I went to the store to start my job.

“Hello, Lovi~!” a well-known voice greeted me on my back.

I turned. If on Monday it was a surprise discovering that my grandpa’s restaurant was the same one Antonio took me to when we met, it was even more surprising to find the bastard working there as a waiter.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I work here, I told you last week, don’t you remember?”

I remember he told something about he had been phoned to work some days in a restaurant, but I didn’t pay so much attention.

“Hey, and what about you?” he asked reproachfully. “If it wasn’t because your grandfather told me, I wouldn’t have known that you were going to start working here until I had seen you, how mean you are!” he pouted and pinched my cheek. “Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

“Auch, stop!” I complained, slamming his hand away. “I didn’t tell you anything because, knowing how bore you are, you wouldn’t have unstuck of here and wouldn’t have let me work in peace.”

“As if I didn’t have anything else to do!” he said between laughs. “However I must admit that you have part of reason, with a waiter like you serving me I wouldn’t get up from my chair all night.” He winked.

“B-But what are you saying, i-idiot?” I blushed to the root of my hair, how was he able to say something as embarrassing so easily?

“Hey, you!” the manager interrupted us. “Stop chatting and get to work, the tables don’t lay alone and there are a couple of customers waiting.” Obviously grandpa and Feliciano. “And, Antonio, show the kid” he pointed at me “everything he has to do and how.”

“Okay~” he accepted, smiling and happy. Then he turned to me without erasing his glowing smile and said in a half serious, half mocking tone, “I’ll let you call me ‘boss’ if you feel like it.”

“Fuck off!”

I put on my apron and left the store snorting as the idiot bastard came after me starting with is explanations and advice, which would have been quite useful if I had been a damn rookie without the slightest idea of the job, but it turned out that everything he explained to me I already knew thanks to my fifteen horrible and failed previous experiences, although… it didn’t hurt me to refresh my memory a little.

The job was practically the same as in Italy, so I was able to manage myself easily, without needing that bore of Antonio’s help and, best of all, without any complaints from anyone of the staff (I hope the presence of grandpa had nothing to do with it). Well, after several hours serving customers with an unusual kindness in me (except for women), I was exhausted, not even the delicious pizza I ate at the end of the shift helped me recover.

“Lovi, are you okay?”

If I hadn’t been eating, I would have fallen asleep and my head would have hit the table due to the fatigue, making all the workers laugh at me. The damn bastard of Antonio, on the other hand, was smiling and without signs of exhaustion… he works twice or three times more than me, where on earth does he get so much energy?

“What do you think, bastard?” I rubbed my eyes. “I’m tired!”

“Don’t worry, we’ll leave right away,” He put a piece of pizza in his mouth, “as soon as we finish dinner.”

Taking advantage of the presence of the bastard in the restaurant, Feliciano and grandpa left as soon as they ended dinner, leaving Antonio the task of taking me back home, to which he agreed with one of his typical and sparkling smiles. Nobody asked me. Although complaining had no sense, going back with the bastard was better than having to wait for a damn bus.

We went out through a side door to a lonely and dark street, one of those that makes you suspicious when you look around, even if it joined the main avenue and the promenade. Antonio walked a few steps in front of me and it was not that I was afraid or something like that, but why the hell was the bastard taking me for that way?

“Take this” he said while giving me a helmet he had just pulled out from under the seat of a black motorcycle, “put it on.”

“I didn’t imagine you as a motorist.”

“Actually, I prefer the car” he said as he pulled the motorcycle toward the road, “but this is more practical to move around the city, especially to park. Come on, put on your helmet, we’re leaving.”

I obeyed. Antonio got on the bike and put his helmet on too. I got behind him and grabbed the iron behind the seat, obviously I wasn’t going to hug the bastard. Or so I intended, because when he started the engine and we began to move, I felt that my body was going back a little. Instinctively I changed the position of my hands and hugged Antonio’s waist tightly, joining my torso to his wide and warm back that cut the wind.

In just ten minutes we were in the old quarter with the motorcycle stored in a nearby garage (owned by the old man, precisely where he also kept his car). We walked towards the building slowly, not because I didn’t feel like arriving, but because I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open between steps. Suddenly the bastard stood in front of me, turning his back to me, and bent down throwing his hand back. 

“Get up.” It was all he said to me as he stretched his fingers.

“WHAT?! Are you crazy, bastard? I’m not planning to get on your back.”

“Come on, Lovi” he turned his head towards me to look at me, “you are so tired that you can’t even walk.”

“You won’t be able to carry me!” I replied.

“I have already carried you before, in case you don’t remember,” of course, the day I fainted on the beach, just when we met. I blushed slightly as I remembered it, “and I can tell that you aren’t heavy at all. I can carry you easily. Get up, listen to the boss.”

“But how are you going to carry me? Aren’t you tired, bastard?”

“Of course I am, but I still have enough energy to take you home.” He moved his fingers again as a sign for me to get on his back. “But you go up the stairs alone, eh?”

I finally agreed. I placed my arms around his neck and rested my head on his shoulder, I could feel the subtle sweet smell of his perfume. He held my legs to his waist, stood up straight and started walking.

“I’d like to know what you eat to have so much energy.” I said. “Or what planet did you come from.”

“You’re so funny.” He laughed. "I prepare what you want when you feel like it. Anyway, you’ll taste my food soon, this weekend it’s my turn to prepare lunch for everyone.”

“Better don’t give the turn to the potato bastards again or you’ll regret it.” I threatened him yawning, so my threatening tone went to hell and lost all credibility. The bastard let out a laugh and quickened his pace.

When we were reaching the building, we could see the tulip was entering through the giant door. Antonio yelled at him to get his attention and to hold the door as we arrived. He stopped under the frame and turned his head, he had listened to us. He stared at us as we approached, but when we were only two meters away, a crooked smile appeared on his face and he closed the door in our faces. What an asshole!

I got off Antonio’s back, who searched for his keys in his pockets. I rubbed my eyes several times while I was going up the three floors that separated me from my comfortable and soft bed. The bastard grabbed my hand, stopping me on the first step of the last flight of stairs.

“What do you want now?” I asked tired.

“I also work in the restaurant tomorrow and the next day, do you want me to come for you so that we can go together?”

“Su-Sure.” I smiled shyly, I avoided bus again.

“Great.” He smiled widely. “See you tomorrow!”

He turned and opened his apartment’s door. I didn’t move from the step, I should say something to the bastard before going home.

“Hey!” I shouted while he was crossing the threshold. He stopped and fixed his eyes on me. “I… I…”

“What happens, Lovi?” he cocked his head.

I turned around and went up a couple of steps. I could feel the heat on my face and ears, I was red, fortunately Antonio wasn’t seeing my face in that moment. I stopped again, but didn’t turn around.

“I… mmm… Tha… Thanks!”

And, without looking back, I started going up home again.

* * *

 

On Friday, the bastard came for me too early, one hour earlier than expected, moment in which I was immersed practicing a new piece (on my own initiative, nothing had to do that the idiot Roderich had threatened me with imposing more punishments).

I was so concentrated in music that I didn’t notice my room’s door had been opened and I had two spectators, Feliciano and Antonio, until they broke into applause when I finished playing. I almost got the heart out due to the shock they gave me. I blushed with a mixture of fury and embarrassment, I hated being watched while practicing.

“What the fuck are you doing there looking at me as two idiots?” I said angrily going towards them, who stepped back a little. “Feliciano, idiot, how many times have I told you not to interrupt me or even think of entering my room in the middle of a rehearsal?”

“Ve!” he ran to hide behind the bastard. “Sorry, _fratello_ , but it’s that Antonio arrived and…”

“As if the Pope himself had come from Rome! If I tell you not to enter, you don’t enter! And that also goes for you!” I threatened the bastard with my finger.  Feliciano took the opportunity to flee to the living room. “Anyway, what the hell are you doing here so early? It’s not time to leave yet.”

“I know, but I want you to come with me to a place before.” I raised an eyebrow and looked at him questioningly. “Relax, you’ll like it.”

The bastard didn’t tell me where he was taking me until we were in the place, a small Italian ice-cream parlour near the restaurant. It was impossible I didn’t like it, my mouth was watering, could there be anything more wonderful? Antonio showed off that generosity that characterized him and treated me. Then we walked towards the promenade and took sit on a bench in front of the restaurant to eat our ice-creams.

“I’d have liked to do this after work” Antonio said, “but I have a feeling that today you’ll end up the same or worse than yesterday.”

“Not all people take _Duracell_ batteries for breakfast like you.”

“I guess it will be a matter of getting used to it.” I shrugged, not knowing whether agreeing or not. “I only hope that, since tomorrow you don’t have to get up early, you can stay awake at night.”

“For what?”

“It’s Francis’ birthday.” The perverted Frenchy’s birthday, who knows what kind of madness he would think of doing to celebrate it. “I bet whatever you want that he prepares some kind of party in his apartment.”

“An orgy?”

“Wow! Don’t exaggerate!” he laughed, ate a bit of his ice-cream, and made a face of curiosity. “Maybe would you like to participate in one?”

I blushed and headbutted him in the stomach, he deserved it for being a pervert. The bastard writhed in pain for a few seconds.

“ASSHOLE!” I stood up. “You are a damn degenerate, how you dare to ask me such a thing?”

“Auch, Lovi” he sighed, massaging the blow, “don’t be angry, man, it was a joke.”

“One in very poor taste!” I sat again on the bench. “Who do you think I am? Idiot!”

“Okay, okay, sorry. I won’t tell you that kind of joke again.” I glared him, for some reason I didn’t believe in his words. He, on the other hand, smiled as always. “Anyway, whatever Francis organizes, we already have prepared a small celebration in his honor.”

As could not be otherwise, the celebration of the Frenchman’s birthday would take place in grandpa’s house, the _alma mater_ of parties. The community lunch was moved up to Saturday and all tenants were notified, including the birthday boy, who didn’t know he would be honored.

We were almost all sat down to table, only one person was missing… the same that always was late, with the difference that on that occasion he was the one who had to provide us with the food.

“Why the hell does that damn Antonio bastard take so long?” I complained, my stomach was rumbling furiously. “I’m hungry!”

“The idiot is not even able to arrive on time to the pantomimes organized by himself.” The tulip, as usual, had to say a negative comment about the bastard. He made a gesture of pain, Emma had pinched him under the table for talking too much.

Then Antonio made his appearance in the room. He carried a giant paella in his hands and began to sing the happy birthday song loudly, the others joined as if they were children. The Frenchman made a very theatrical gesture of surprise, holding a hand to his chest as if he were deeply moved.

The bastard left on the table the giant paella, in which he had written with shrimp the phrase “HAPPY B’DAY, FRANCIS”. The honoree ran to hug the Spaniard, although… rather than hugging him he was rubbing him up and down, running his hands all over his back to where it lost its name. And the idiot Antonio didn’t even notice! He was still there, smiling happily, hugging his dear friend as he allowed the other to touch him. I don’t know why, but it was terribly annoying.

After releasing the bastard, the Frenchman kissed and hugged everybody to thank for the surprise. I moved my hands to get him away from me, but he didn’t care, he approached me, grabbed my face and kissed me on the cheek repeatedly despite my disgust and displeasure. He was covering me with his slobber (how disgusting!).

“Stop now, Fran” Antonio said with a cold smile, squeezing his shoulder, “you have thanked him enough, don’t you think so?”

The Frenchy smiled him nervously and continued the round of kisses and hugs. I run to the bathroom to clean my face of the French slobbers.

When I came back, the bastard of Antonio was serving the paella. He took my plate, the one left to be served, and filled it so much. He stood looking at me with expectation until I tasted a bit of that yellow rice, it was delicious, although I wasn’t going to admit it in front of the bastard. However, I think my face betrayed me, because Antonio’s smile grew bigger and brighter (how the hell is it possible?).

“Before we start eating,” interrupted the Frenchman just when I was going to continue to delight with the bastard’s paella, “I have to invite you, as I do every year in this day, to the party I’ll celebrate at my house tonight. I hope none of you will be missing, I’ll roll call.” He winked in a way that was intended to be sensual, it gave me chills.

“Will you also delight us with a striptease like last year?” Emma asked with a wicked smile.

“Emma, _cherie_ , I know that seeing three hot guys like Toni, Gilbert and me dancing on a table and stripping to the rhythm of the music is something hard to forget nor it repeats every day” I almost choke on my drink when I imagined the scene, “but you who have come to all the celebrations I have done since I am in Spain will know that there hasn’t been one the same as the previous one, so you can expect anything.”

“Yes, darling, but what hasn’t failed in any is that someone ended naked, who will be this year?”

“Be careful, _ma belle_ , it could be your turn.”

“Get close to my sister if you dare.” The tulip said, cracking his knuckles.

“I don’t force anyone to take off their clothes, who does it is by their own will.”

“Except the first year! Kesesese… Do you remember that two policemen came saying that the neighbors had complained about the noise?”

“Impossible to forget it!” grandpa said with a wicked expression. “I hope you considered it a good birthday present, Francis.”

“One of the best I have received, _mon ami_.”

“I’m glad because you can’t imagine…”

Grandpa’s cell phone rang and he left the table to talk. I was glad, I didn’t feel like listening to the old man talking about the binges he lived up as if he still were twenty years old.

“We turned whiter than Gil from the scare” Antonio commented laughing, “and Romu spent all the time acting dumb until Francis was handcuffed to a chair and they made their show, stripping him! God, what a crazy night!”

Definitely, after hearing a lot of similar anecdotes about the Frenchman’s parties, and no matter how great they were considered by those who had participated in them, my grandfather included, I completely refused to put one foot in the house of the perverted Frenchy, surely in the moment I was left alone he would jump on me…

But of course, I wasn’t bearing in mind that my good friend the bastard of Antonio, bore between bores, would spend the whole damn evening, even at work, being a real pain and insisting that I should go to the party with him.

“No!” I answered angrily for the fifteenth time to the bastard. “Stop insisting now, I’m not going to your friend’s party.”

“But why not, Lovi? We’ll have a good time, you’ll see…”

“You can’t be sure,” I took a couple of plates to serve, “so I pass.”

“Come on, Lovi” he made that puppy look and pouted, “it won’t be the same without you.”

I stood still in front of the dining room door with the two plates in my hands, was so important my presence for the bastard to have fun? Damn, damn, damn one and a thousand times the bastard for being a bore and convince, and damn one and a thousand times I for letting me convince so easily.

“Okay, I’m going.” I sighted. Bastard’s face lighted up and smiled happily. “But only on the condition that you don’t leave me alone at any time.”

“As you wish!”

He run to me, hugged me from behind (I almost dropped the plates) and kissed me on the cheek. I got paralyzed and with my face burning, as he took the dishes from my hands and left completely happy to serve them.

In fact, the bastard kept on irradiating happiness until we arrived in the Frenchy’s house. Fuck, there were more people in there than in the war, where the hell had all this bunch of stranger come from? Unconsciously I grabbed Antonio’s arm and we entered into the crowd.

“At last the last two that were missing have arrived.” The Frenchman grabbed us from behind and joined his cheeks with ours, rubbing his scratchy beard for them. He was too drunk. “Here you are, _mes amours_ ” he gave each of us a plastic glass full of a green liquid, “it’s a special cocktail created by me. Enjoy.”

He gave us a pat on the butt, yeah, by the face the perverted asshole touched my butt and left with impunity disappearing into the crowd.

I looked at my glass with suspicion, however the bastard drank it in one gulp, and according to him it wasn’t bad. I sipped the drink, it was sweet and cold. I imitated Antonio and drank it in a gulp.

We kept on moving between the people until we reached a table with snacks and bowls full of that strange, sweet and heavenly drink, where we also met the familiar faces of the rest of the tenants of the building: the albino, who boasted in front of Elia and Emma, who were laughing of his silly things; the potato bastard and my brother, who were chatting with the tulip, who didn’t take his eyes off his sister; and grandpa, a bit further, who was trying to flirt with two girls at least twenty years younger than him.

“ _Fratello!_ ” idiot Feliciano shouted while jumping over me, he was a bit tipsy. “You have finally arrived, I missed you.” He tried to kiss me on the cheek.

Fuck, I didn’t expect that sudden attack of brotherly love.

I pushed Feliciano away and he bumped into Antonio, who held him before falling to the ground. My idiot brother hugged him in gratitude… fucking boy with a limpet complex, I had to go to separate him from the bastard or he would have stayed the whole damn night stuck to him, who also suffered the same problem.

Antonio laughed at my action and gave me a glass full of green liquid as my idiot brother went to hover around his new _little friend_ the potato bastard, it seemed he wanted to ask him to dance, but he didn’t got it. It has to be a real spectacle to see that wardrobe moving his feet to rhythm of the music.

“ _Honhonhon_ ” the host laughed, suddenly appearing with his shirt open and his hairy chest in the air. I hid behind the bastard to avoid a new and gratuitous French touching, “are you having a good time, _mes amis_?”

“Of course; right, Lovi?”

I poked out my head a bit and nodded. The Frenchy continued laughing and went towards my grandfather. The latter, after talking to the Frenchman, came to where Antonio and I were and, contrary to what he always did, he informed us that he was going home. That was strange, very, very strange… maybe he got depressed because he had been rejected by the girls.

Even without grandpa there, the party continued, although with the Frenchman a little crestfallen. I kept on drinking with the bastard near me all the time, as he had agreed, at least until the idiot of his friend the albino came up with the brilliant idea of dancing.

“Come on, _tomboy_ ” he said to the Hungarian, who looked at him as if he were the most repulsive being on the planet (which in fact was), “let’s show all these amateurs how a guy as awesome as me and a girl as man as you dance together, leaving them all open-mouthed.”

For the Hungarian’s expression, I would have sworn that she was having an internal debate about whether to kick the albino’s face or laugh at his occurrence. In the end it was the second, although the German didn’t escape a slap on the back of the neck.

“Let’s go dance we too, Lovi?” the bastard asked, excited.

“No way.” I answered bluntly, finishing my drink.

“I will dance with you, veee~…”

“Me too.” Emma said, grabbing my brother by his hand.

“Very well.” Smiled the bastard. “Stay here with Ludwig, Lovi, so you won’t be alone.”

Of all the people I could stay with, why with the potato bastard? And not only that, but beside the potato lover was the tulip killing Antonio with his eyes every time he got too close to Emma.

Damn Antonio, damn Feliciano hoarder of attention.

I squeezed the plastic glass in my hands, very annoyed, and threw it on the ground. I turned to the table and took a new one that filled with the green drink. I drank it in a gulp. I refilled it and did the same. I filled it a third time and crossed my arms while watching the scene of my brother, the bastard and Emma dancing like crazy near the albino and the Hungarian who, although it seemed false, did move well.

I was getting hot.

Antonio approached to me dancing (or acting the fool) and took me by the hand, forcing me to move to the rhythm of the music despite I refused to do so. Somehow, I couldn’t resist. He made me spin around twice and took me to where the other two where.

The song finished and we stopped dancing. It was really hot! I needed to refresh myself urgently. I went for another cocktail glass. Antonio, Emma and Feliciano accompanied me, they looked thirsty, but then the bastard had the brilliant idea of competing to see who could drink faster. I don’t know who won… from that moment, music, dances, faces… everything becomes very diffuse…

The next thing I remember is waking up at noon in my underwear on my bed with a terrible headache, how the hell had I got there? And why the hell was I almost naked? Luckily there was nobody sleeping next to me, on the contrary I would have imagine anything.

I went to the living room staggering and bumping against the walls of the corridor, the whole damn house was moving under my feet, what a hangover! Well, at least there was silence.

“Grandpa! Where are you?” Fuck, even my own voice echoed in my head. “I expect you have prepared a good coffee… because I need it urgently.”

I was strange that the old man didn’t answer, I guessed he would have gone out to do some errand, although it was something unusual on Sunday, he likes to slack that day.

The strident noise of the phone rumbled in my aching hangover head.

“ _Pronto!_ ” I replied in a bad mood.

“Hello, Lovino!” it was grandpa. “It’s good that you are already awake! I needed to talk to you, I have just landed right now…”

“WHAT?!” I regretted screaming.

“I have just landed in Rome.”

“And what the hell are you doing in Rome?”

“There’s an important problem that I have been trying to solve all weekend, but it has been completely impossible to it from Spain.” Now I understood the phone call in the middle of lunch and why he left early from the Frenchman’s party. “I had to leave urgently this morning and I couldn’t tell you.”

“Don’t lie, yesterday you knew that you would have to leave, you could have told us.”

“I didn’t want to spoil you the fun.” What a shitty excuse. “Anyway, my stay here may prolong a bit…”

“How long is ‘a bit’?”

“I don’t know, but at least a couple of weeks.”

“TWO WEEKS?!” I put my hand on my temple and cursed myself for yelling.

“Yes, so listen carefully: take care of your brother and try not to fight with him” fuck, it’s true that idiot drives me crazy most of the time, but it’s not like I was always bad with him; “do not miss the music lessons or work, because I’ll find out and will get angry if you do” now it turns out that my grandfather is omnipresent, like God, and he finds out everything; “and if you have any problems, do not hesitate to ask Antonio or any of the building tenants for help, they won’t hesitate to help you. Have you understood?”

“I’m not my brother, so yes.”

“Well, be careful. _Ciao_ , Lovino.”

I leaned back on the couch and closed my eyes, the conversation with grandpa had managed to increase my headache, damn, I would have to deal with idiot Feliciano for two whole weeks, what horror.

A plaintive “ve” was heard in the corridor. Feliciano appeared sobbing and clutching his belly.

“ _Nonno! Fratello!_ ” the idiot hadn’t seen me. “ _Dove siete?_ ”

“Here, idiot. Stop crying, I have a damn fucking headache. Oh, and don’t look for the old man, he has gone to Rome for work. He won’t be back in two weeks.”

“VE! WHAT?!” he got scared.

“DO NOT SHOUT, IDIOT!”

Feliciano cringed in fear, I cringed in pain. I felt as if my head was going to split in two.

“Veee… _fratello”_ he moaned, “no… I’m not feeling well…”

“Me neither. It’s called a hangover, idiot, consequences of getting drunk last night.”

“But… but… my head hurts a lot” he said in a plaintive voice, sobbing. “I’m dizzy… I have nausea… and it hurts… it hurts a lot… my stomach… Do something…”

He pressed his arms against his belly. Until then I thought he was making a mountain out of a molehill, but it seemed that he was suffering a lot, lots of drops of cold sweat ran down my brother’s face.

“Fuck, Feliciano, what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know.” He started to cry inconsolably.

Damn Feliciano, he chose the worst time to get sick. I had to think of something quickly.

“Okay, I’ll look for the crazy Hungarian to examine you."

“ _Grazie, fratello_ …”

I went down the stairs slowly, even walking caused pangs of pain in my head. Luckily (if you can call it luck) the ground had stopped moving under my feet. I considered asking Elizaveta for something to get rid of the headache, but I discarded it immediately, I was sure she would have given me an injection.

I rang the bell of the Hungarian’s apartment despite the annoyance of hearing that sound rumbling in my head. I didn’t get an answer, everything was quieter than usual. I rang again, just to make sure Eli wasn’t there to help me.

There was a feminine scream coming from inside the house. And then more yells, some with a male voice. Things breaking… what the fuck was going on inside that apartment? I put my ear on the door and listened.

“I kill you, I swear I kill you.” Eli’s voice said, I guessed.

“But drop that frying-pan, please, because ending up beating me after an amazing night of passion is not awesome.”

Awesome? I couldn’t believe it, the macho albino had spent the night with Elizaveta, how the hell had he managed to trick the Hungarian into agreeing to do… whatever they had done?

“Come on, Eli, don’t be like that, last night you enjoyed it.”

“You have taken advantage of me, you damned egotistical imbecile!”

“No, Eli! Someone as awesome as me would never do something so…” I heard a thud. “Ah!”

Hearing Elizaveta being angry was scary, but seeing her appear in the doorway wrapped in an aura of fury holding a frying-pan produced dread.

“What do you want?” she asked with her voice full of rage, I freaked out.

“I… uhm… eeh…” fuck, being in front of the crazy Hungarian in a rage mood made me nervous. “M-My brother… F-Feliciano doesn’t… doesn’t … feel w-well, cou-could you… would you m-mind going to… to see him… please?

By her look, it seemed that she wanted to know something else. I took a deep breath and prepared to explain what was happening to Feliciano without stuttering.

“He has awaken with a hangover, but he feels very bad, he has a headache and a stomachache, and that makes him nervous, and I get nervous too, and he doesn’t stop crying…

Eli sighed deeply and relaxed her face, that was a good sign.

“Very well, I’ll go up to examine him.”

She entered her house and changed the frying-pan for her black bag.

I looked inside before she closed the door to go upstairs, the macho albino was lying on the floor half unconscious with his torso naked and the trousers half-put… it wasn’t necessary to imagine much to know what my self-proclaimed friend had done that night with his beloved Hungarian.

Elizaveta went up the stairs with firm steps and without saying a word, maybe she felt embarrassed that I knew what happened with the albino.

When we passed in front of the apartment of the Spaniard, he left his house with a bag in his hands. Eli continued the march up the stairs, I stopped.

“Hello, Lovi!”

I made a gesture of pain, him too.

“Don’t yell at me, idiot!” I spat, raising my voice. New gestures of pain. “I have a hellish hangover!”

“Sorry.” He touched his temple and closed his eyes. “I had a terrible headache too.”

Fuck, once the bastard gets drunk and I miss it. Well, I didn’t miss it, but I couldn’t remember it.

“Where are you going?” he asked me in a lower voice tone than usual.

“Back home, I went to look for Elizaveta to examine my brother, the idiot has a much worse hangover than mine and yours together.”

“Oh, poor boy.” He sympathized.

“And where are you going?” I asked for boredom, not because I was interested to know. “You have bedroom eyes.”

“I just got up.” He laughed. “And I was about going up to your house.”

“To my house? For what?”

“For giving this back to you.” He lifted the bag he carried in his hands.

I raised an eyebrow looking at him inquisitive, I didn’t remember having lent anything to the bastard so that he had to return to me.

“And what the hell is that?” I took the bag and opened it, there were only clothes… clothes like those that…

“It’s the clothes you wore last night.”

My body and mind got paralyzed for a few seconds, why the hell did the Spanish bastard have the clothes I was wearing the night before? I began to tremble, I don’t know if it was in anger, in shame, in a mixture of both or something unknown. My face lit up, I felt the blood on my cheeks.

“You have turned completely red, Lovi” the bastard chuckled, “like a little tomato!”

“W-W-Why are my clothes in… in a b-bag? Wh-Why do you have it?”

“You don’t remember?” I shook my head frantically. “I guess it’s not surprising, you were very drunk…”

“WHAT HAPPENED?” I shouted, ignoring my headache and the bastard’s.

“Well, we were dancing when suddenly you said that you were very hot and went to the landing, taking off your shirt and throwing it down the stairs. I left behind you and, seeing how you were, I forced you to go home… I don’t know how we didn’t roll down the stairs, because we were staggering from one place to another. On my landing you started dancing again, you said you were hot, sat on the stairs and threw me your trousers.

In those moments my face would have gone from the most intense red to radiate own light, what uncontrol, what a shame… the bastard took it as a joke, but my heart was beating madly… of shame or other thing?

“Then you fell asleep on the stairs. I took the keys from your trousers, carried you on my shoulder to your house and laid you on your bed. And I left and picked up your clothes in my way.

If everything that Antonio had already told me was embarrassing, my desire for knowing what I didn’t remember made me ask something that I could possibly regret.

“And… did I say or do something weird?” I asked, fixing my eyes on the ground.

“Well…” shit, there was something else. “You told me that you were going to do me something that nobody else had ever done me before…”

Earth, swallow me. How could I say such a bad phrase?

“Playing the _Spring_ of Valverde or something like that…”

“The _Spring_ of Vivaldi, ASSHOLE!”

Damn Antonio bastard for causing me more headaches and making me think bad… and he makes me think badly about myself!

I turned angrily and started going up the stairs, leaving the bastard alone on his landing. Eli was in the middle of the flight of the stairs looking at me with raised eyebrows and a mischievous smile, without a doubt she had heard everything, damn it!

“I don’t know what your smile means, but I don’t like it.”

She only giggled and kept going up.

I took a breath several times to calm down.

What a shitty day: I wake up with a mortal hangover, I have to take care of the idiot of Feliciano and I find out terribly embarrassing things that I did being drunk…

Without a doubt, I will never again put a foot on the Frenchman’s parties.

 

 


	9. Awakening

_Chapter 9: Awakening_

It was Thursday, at last! It is extremely ironic that I was glad about the fact that I had to take a bus and spend several hours going from one place to another, putting an unusual smile on my face to serve customers while working. And all, why? For one simple reason: to get rid of my brother for a few hours.

Since grandpa's departure four days ago, the idiot of Feliciano had become more of a bore than before. When he wasn't painting or spending time with his gigantic friend the potato bastard, he refused to separate from me, he even wanted to accompany me to the violin lessons on Monday! Luckily, I managed to dissuade him by instilling fear in Roderich and he decided to continue sleeping all morning. What I couldn't get away with so easily was that my idiot brother went into my bed every night, I can't refuse! He starts whining, makes me feel guilty and I end up accepting… fucking coward, it's hard to believe that he's only a year younger than me.

Well, after four hours in the restaurant I got prepared to come back home. What a pain in the ass, the bastard didn't work there that week and I had no choice but to use the damn public transport to return.

I went out the side door of the restaurant to the dark and lonely alley that I ran through until I reached the main avenue, but not because I was afraid, of course not!, but because it was possible that I lost the bus and I didn't want to wait for the next one. It was past midnight and I was already sleepy.

I was really tired, not as much as the previous Thursday, but enough so that I didn't pay attention to the people in the bus (girls' laughs could be heard in the background and I didn't pay any attention to them) and I sat in two free seats together which allowed me to stretch my legs comfortably… until the idiot of the moment approached from the back.

"Well, well, look who we have here!" the tulip said with a crooked smile, I hadn't seen him entering the bus. "If it's  _Sponge Lovi_ , where have you been getting drunk tonight?"

If looks could kill, the damn tulip would have collapsed in a heap. He was laughing at me for what happened on Saturday at the Frenchy's party, and he had put me an absurd nickname for it!

I held his gaze for a few seconds and turned my face, I didn't want to argue with him and I expected him to realize that he was bothering and to get back to the back of the bus, but no.

"Take off your feet and sit down properly," he ordered. I shot him daggers again, "I want to sit there."

"Are there no more seats on the whole fucking bus that you have to come to bother me?" I said angrily.

"Maybe there are, but this is a public place and I want to sit there, so move away before I complain to the driver and he throws you out of the bus on the next stop."

I snorted and grunted before lowering my legs off the seat to leave room for the annoying tulip, see if at least he would shut up and stop annoying me. He sat down with his arms crossed, serious and with his eyes fixed on the nape of the person in front of him. I leaned my head against the window and watched the nocturnal cityscape as my eyes closed.

"Are you so drunk that you're not even able to keep your eyes open?"

That woke me up completely.

"I'm tired, not drunk, asshole! I just got out of work right now."

"Ah, but do you work?" he raised an eyebrow, surprised, but somehow keeping the indifferent gesture that characterized him. "I thought you were a spoiled brat who did nothing but demand and wait for everything to be put in front of you."

"Well, you were wrong!" I was offended and I puffed my cheeks, the damn tulip had described me as useless. "I do something else besides scratching my balls with two hands."

"Well, it's not exactly the impression you give."

"Appearances can be deceptive, idiot."

He gave me a crooked glance that made me cringe in my seat, his face would scare the bravest person.

"And where do you work?" he recovered his gesture and tone of indifference.

"In my grandfather's restaurant…"

"In the end I wasn't wrong at all, you are the person with pull."

"I'm not!" I yelled at him, "I work as hard as anyone."

"Yes, sure." He said in a condescending tone.

"Yes, fuck. Ask that bastard of Antonio if you don't believe me, he worked with me."

The tulip growled when I named Antonio.

"I'm not going to ask anything to that idiot, he's your dear friend" although he showed indifference, there was resentment in his words when talking about the bastard, "he wouldn't be impartial or objective, so he can shove his opinion where it fits because it's not valid for me."

"Fuck, dude, what the hell did Antonio do to you to hate him so much?"

The tulip held his gaze with mine for a few seconds before answering.

"That… is NO concern of yours."

And with those words he ended the conversation.

The way that remained by bus and the subsequent walk home we did in silence. Better that than wasting my energies trying to convince that giant with a bad-mood face that I wasn't useless, he sure would find something to mock me again. Well, he could laugh as much as he wanted, I would find something to make fun of him at any moment… and I would do it! Revenge is a dish best served cold and an Italian never forgets.

Not even when the tulip went to get into his flat we exchange words, he entered and I continued up the stairs.

When I got home, everything was almost completely dark except for the light of the television. I assumed that Feliciano would be lying on the sofa waiting for me, although it was very strange that he hadn't lit any lamps, he has the damn habit of lighting up as much as possible the room in which he is in when he is alone at home at night.

I closed the door carefully to not make noise, I would scare my brother approaching the sofa stealthily and taking him off guard.

"IIIIIIH!"

It was the second time that damn German scared me. It was such a shock seeing the macho potato sitting on the sofa that I tripped and fell to the ground on my back, hitting by butt painfully.

"What the fuck are you doing here, potato bastard?" I yelled from the ground.

"Shhh." He said putting a finger in front of his lips.

My brother was sleeping peacefully lying on the sofa, his head resting on the lap the potato bastard, as if I didn't have enough that the damn German made me shut up in my own house, that vision infuriated me. I stood up slowly, tears bursting out because of the fall, and I shook my idiot brother to wake up, although the potato lover tried to stop me.

"What?" Feliciano asked sleepy opening one eye. "What happens?"

"I'm back, idiot, wake up!" I said. "And you, potato bastard, you better go off or I'll kick you out if necessary."

The words I said to the potato bastard woke up completely the idiot Feliciano, who faced me angrily.

" _Fratello!_ " He scolded me. "Don't talk to Ludwig like that! He is my friend and I asked him to accompany me while I was waiting for you."

"I don't give a fuck, stupid, I don't want him here. So you are slow to leave, potato bastard."

" _Fratello!_ "

"Feliciano," the macho potato interrupted with a serene voice and serious face, standing up from the sofa, "it doesn't matter, I'm leaving. Goodnight."

My idiot brother accompanied his dear friend to the door while apologizing to him for my behavior. In my opinion, there was nothing to excuse, I don't like the potato bastard and I show it openly, it's all.

I went to bed to not keep on listening to Feliciano's nonsense. I knew that, as soon as the German left, he would come running to my room, scared to death and begging me to let him sleep with me. What surprised me was that this coward appeared angry rather than scared.

" _Fratello_! Why are you like that with Ludwig?" he scolded me with a grimace terribly similar to my mother's. "He hasn't done anything to you!"

He got on his knees on the bed and began to beat me on the arm with his fists, he hit like a little girl, but after several blows it began to hurt. I grabbed his hands with some difficulty because he kept moving.

"Auch, idiot! Stop moving!"

He didn't listen to me, he kept on trying to hit me uselessly.

"Stop now or you will spend the night alone in your room!"

My threat took effect and idiot Feliciano stood still. I released his hand distrustfully, but he simply gave me a sad look and lay on the bed, covering himself to the head with the sheet (he was going to roast because of the heat).

" _Fratello_ , stupid." He said under the sheet. I kicked him. "Auch, hurts!"

"So learn to shut your damn trap, idiot."

"You're so mean,  _fratello_." He sobbed.

The damn idiot knows some tricks to make me feel bad, but it was too late (half past one!) and I was pretty tired to listen to his nonsense, so I switched off the light and turned my back to him, we didn't even say goodnight.

Because of my argument with Feliciano I slept fatally and woke up sleepy, which make me receive a couple of sermons from that prissy Roderich for not paying enough attention to his explanations or to the music I played. Luckily he didn't punish me forcing me to copy absurd phrases over and over again. However, the four hours of class seemed eternal and when I got out the only thing I wanted was to have lunch and a long and good nap until the time to leave for the restaurant.

"Hello, Lovi~!"

I met that bastard Antonio on the landing of the second floor when he was about to get into his house. I nodded to him in greeting.

"Look, what a coincidence, right now I was thinking about you and wondering if you'd have arrived from class, I had thought that we could go somewhere to have lunch."

Although the offer was tempting, I had to reject it, I wanted to eat as fast as possible to go to bed, and Feliciano would surely have prepared lunch. The bastard was sad to hear my refusal, I noticed despite he tried to not erase the smile on his face. He made me feel bad.

"Fuck, don't make that face." I said. "We'd better go other day, I'm very sleepy today."

"Didn't you sleep well? Or maybe you went to bed too late?"

I had understood that those kind of questions were asked by my grandfather, but by the bastard who, more than a friend, seemed a worried mother.

"Both." I answered tired. He made a gesture that meant that he wanted to know more details. "I went to bed late and slept bad because I had an argument with Feliciano after returning from work."

"So the voices I heard were yours… And why did you argue?"

"The idiot let the potato-lover enter at home and got angry with me because I kicked him out."

"What did Ludwig do to you so you don't like him?" he asked laughing.

"Are you going to take that wardrobe's side too?" I got angry. I don't like him, it's all! I don't need to justify myself to anyone."

I turned my back to the bastard to continue my way home, but he held my arm and turned me to him.

"Lovi, don't get mad, please!" he begged. "I'm not taking anybody's side, it just was a question."

I sighted. Antonio's imploring eyes didn't allow me to keep my anger with him for so long.

"Ok… I'm not angry anymore."

"Great!"

The bastard hugged me. I tried to separate him from me by hitting him, but I didn't succeed. The idiot is quite strong.

"Let go of me, you bastard!"

He obeyed me smiling and without saying a word.

"Hey, Lovi, what do you think if instead of going to eat lunch I meet you this afternoon before you go to work, I'll take you and we'll have some ice creams in the same place as last week?" it wasn't a bad idea, but before I could answer, he added: "I treat you, of course."

My eyes sparkled probably, Antonio couldn't have proposed anything better: I would avoid bus and I'd have free ice cream, fantastic!

"I'd have accepted even if you didn't treat me."

* * *

The night in the restaurant was very stressful, he had more customers than usual and some of them were fucking fusspots, I was about to throw the food over them (it wouldn't be the first time doing it), but they were lucky and I controlled myself thanks to I had relaxed enough during my long nap and the time I shared with Antonio eating ice cream before entering.

I took the same path than the previous night, by the dark alley which I crossed fast, to go to the bus stop. I had to wait for it at least fifteen minutes. It was a pity that the bastard left when I entered work.

I stood in the middle of the bus holding the bar, there wasn't any damn free sit. There were a lot of no more than fifteen year old girls who wore belt-sized skirts and necklines that reached their navels. They were too young for my tastes and I didn't want to get into trouble, otherwise I would have tried to flirt with them, because more than one devoured me with her eyes (I stir up passions wherever I go).

"Don't you think those girls are too young for you to keep those exchanges of glances with them?"

The tulip appeared from the back of the bus, why the hell he didn't stay in the damn place where he was? I turned my face to the other side, making him know that I didn't feel like talking to him.

"Although your mental age is the same." He added scornfully.

"Fuck! Isn't there anybody else in the damn fucking bus to bother instead of me?"

"Is it a rhetorical question or do you really need an answer?" he asked nonchalantly.

I grabbed the bar so hard that my knuckles turned white, the fucking tulip seemed to know how to tease me, I was being taken for a fool! I shot him a look of deep hatred, but I didn't give him the pleasure of answering.

"It must be funny being paid for pretending to work." The tulip commented loud enough to be heard.

I took a deep breath, containing all the desire of telling him to go to hell that was accumulating inside me, after all that giant was as scary in the middle of the night as inside a bus full of people.

"I pretend nothing."

"Sure."

"Look, idiot, if you don't believe what I'm telling, you only have to go to the fucking restaurant any evening from Thursday to Sunday and check it by yourself. Of course, try not to be my customer or you may end up bathed in spaghetti and tomato sauce."

I groaned and turned away. I think I heard him laughing, but I didn't want to bother to check it. The rest of the way we kept silence, just like the day before, which was quite a relief, I had had enough with the stupid customers to bear the tulip making fun of me constantly.

What was in silence too was my house when I arrived. No noise was heard inside and all the lights were off, not even the television was on. That was strange, very strange. Feliciano would never stand staying alone and not turning on at least one light. I swallowed slowly, would something have happened to my brother?

An anxiety feeling seized me and I went through each and every room in the house shouting my brother's name, but he was nowhere to be found. Fuck, he always tells me and repeats everything to me, absolutely everything, whatever he does or intends to do and that day he hadn't told me anything about going out, where was he then?

I phoned him, there was line, he didn't answer. I phoned again, he still didn't answer. Would he still be angry about the argument of the night before?

I sat on a chair of the dining room with my head resting on my fists and racking my brains about possible places where Feliciano might be at that hour, if nothing had happened to him.

I looked up for a moment and noticed that there was a sheet of scrawled paper on the table. It was a note from Feliciano. Well, rather a hieroglyph because his handwriting was hard to read. I needed at least five minutes to be able to decipher the fucking letter: he had gone to spend the night at the house of the macho potatoes.

Specifically, I can't say what bothered me the most: that Feliciano had gone to spend the night with the potato bastard, that he had made me know through a badly scribbled letter or that he had left me alone at home.

I phoned him a third time.

"Vee~…?" my brother answered in a sleepy voice.

"Feliciano, you idiot!" I yelled at him in a hoarse voice due to the nerves of not finding him. "What the hell aren't you at home? You scared me to death, moron."

" _Fratello?_  I'm at Luddy's house… I left you a note… Haven't you read it?"

"Yeah, I managed to decipher your code, Da Vinci. Come home right now!"

"Veee… I'm already in bed,  _fratello_ , I won't go up."

"What the fuck…?"

 _"Buonanotte!"_ he cut off, both what I was saying and the call.

Full of rage, I threw the mobile phone to the sofa. That fucking idiot of my brother would find out what's what next time I met him. Oh, yes, he was going to regret not obeying me and leaving me alone, preferring to spend the night at that muscled German potato bastard's house.

I went to bed thinking about diverse ways to punish my idiot brother the next day. Although I have just recovered my bed and I had all of it only for me. I stretched out as much as I could in the middle of the mattress and turned to the window looking for the sleeping position. I closed my eyes placidly, ready to immerse myself in the world of dreams…

In the silence, a kind of creaking made me open my eyes and turn on the bedside light. I looked around, but there was nothing strange. I lay back and switched the lights off. A new creaking. I covered myself with the sheet all over my body, head included, I was roasting. I told myself that those noises were just the furniture creaking, it couldn't be anything else, but… what if it was?

Fuck! The damned Feliciano had managed to make me pick up his stupid and irrational fears and I couldn't sleep, the slightest noise put me on alert, what could I do? Obviously one thing, stop acting like that coward of my brother and relax, there was nothing to fear.

Another noise, loud and close. Or maybe there was something to fear, I don't know what, but I wasn't going to stay to discover it.

I put on my pajamas (a wide T-shirt and some pants, because I was in underwear) and left the house, key in my hand, and went down the stairs like crazy. I stopped at the second floor's landing and pounded the door of Antonio's house, he was the only person I could ask the favor of allowing me to spend the night in his apartment, but the idiot didn't open and the silence that enveloped everything was making me more and more nervous. If I kept pounding the door, the one who would go out to the landing would be the tulip wanting to satisfy his murderous instinct because of waking him up… that would be really scary.

"Lovi?"

The bastard opened the door at last and invited me to enter. He seemed sleepy, I had woken him up surely, and he only wore a black boxer short that… that didn't leave space for imagination… Fuck! What the hell was I doing staring at the bastard's body? Shit, I was blushing.

I looked away from him and forced myself to focus on something else… his apartment! The decoration was simple and didn't have much furniture, let's say no more than necessary. Well, I had just realized it was the first time I had visited the bastard's house, and it had been a while since we were friends, but of course, it was always him who went up to look for me.

"Did something happen, Lovi?" he asked yawning and pulling me out of my thoughts. "Why have you come at this time?"

"Well, I… I was wondering if… you would mind… if I could… spend the night here… at your house."

Antonio didn't answer immediately, he smirked, raised an eyebrow and stared at me curiously for a few seconds, what did that expression mean?

"Of course!" he answer, smiling as always. "But why? Has anything happened in your house? And Feli?"

"Feliciano went to his beloved potato friend's house before I arrived and he's gonna sleep there." I crossed my arms and puffed up my cheeks, annoyed at the thought. "And I… well, I didn't feel like staying alone…"

I blurted out the last thing fast, I didn't want the bastard to think I had gone to his house because I was afraid, he would have laughed at me all he had wanted and more.

"Aam… ok. So let's go to bed!"

With a quick movement he grabbed my hand and led me to his room, where he released me and threw himself on his wide bed, moved to one side and waited for me to accompany him. However, I stood under the doorframe, looking at him a bit stunned.

"Lovi, can I know what are you doing there?"

"You won't intend we sleep together, right?"

"And where do you want to sleep if not?"

"Aren't you supposed to have another room with another bed?"

"No" he answered shortly, "I have another room, but I don't have any more beds."

That disconcerted me. The bastard was supposed to have taken in Roderich there after his break with Elizaveta, where had he slept then? And he had also lived a considerable time with the perverted Frenchman, had he shared a bed with him? The repulsion that produced such an idea can't be described in words.

"If you don't have more beds… where the hell did the Frenchy sleep when he lived here?" I asked disgustedly. "And Roderich?"

"When I shared the apartment with Fran I did have another bed," I don't know why, but fuck, what a relief I felt to hear that, "but it's been at least two years since I took it off. In fact, Roderich had to be satisfied with sleeping on the sofa-bed."

"And why the hell don't you open it now?" he was getting on my nerves.

"Lovi," he sat up in bed, "haven't you come to my house in the middle of the night because you didn't want to stay alone? Why do you insist on wanting to sleep alone in another room? I can't see any sense…"

I didn't know what to answer, the damn bastard was right.

I approached to the bed slowly as I noticed my cheeks were turning deep red, how funny those two revealing I was dying of shame… And why was I so embarrassed to get in bed with Antonio? (Ok, with Antonio half naked). We're friends and there's supposed to be nothing wrong with a couple of friends sharing a bed, really? At least that was what Feliciano had told me when he stayed at his friends' house in Italy.

"Do you know you get so cute when you blush?" the bastard commented smiling widely.

"S-Shut up."

I lay down with my back to the bastard, who didn't take his eyes off me on my way from the door to the mattress. No doubt it had been a bad idea to agree to share the bed with him.

"I want to hug you."

"Touch me and I'll kick you to the main door."

The bastard chuckled. I noticed I was even redder, thank God Antonio didn't see my face, he would surely have commented again my imminent blush.

"Good night, Lovi." He said cheerfully, turning off the bedside light.

" _Buonanotte_ …"

In just a couple of minute the bastard's breathing became slower, he had fallen asleep. In a certain way, listening to him relaxed me and soon I also fell asleep.

I woke up at noon. I was completely alone, both in the large bed and in the bastard's apartment, I searched for him in every room until I found a note from him on a plate of churros covered with plastic wrap on the kitchen's table (fuck, what a similar situation to the one lived the night before).

Luckily, unlike my brother's handwriting, Antonio's was legible: " _I had to go to work, but I leave this delicious plate of churros and a coffee in the microwave for breakfast. I hope you enjoy it."_ The note was signed with his name and with a smiley face winking an eye. I couldn't help but smile at that detail.

After devouring that fantastic breakfast, I left Antonio's house. I was making sure the main door was closed when I felt something soft brushing my leg, I jumped back.

I looked down and found a little white rabbit which seemed scared, it didn't expect that jump from me. I caught the animal before it escaped and caressed it to calm it down.

I looked around, it couldn't have come from far way. The door of Emma and tulip's apartment was ajar, that soft and fluffy animal belonged to the blonde probably, she would be certainly grateful to me for finding it!

I entered with the pet in my arms announcing that I was there, but nobody answered. Fuck three similar situations in less that twenty-four hours, it was starting to seem sinister.

"What the fuck are you doing here, brat?"

The tulip appeared by the corridor into a cloud of smoke that smelled of tobacco and… something sweet. I stayed where I was, afraid and hugging tightly the little animal.

"Why the hell are you holding  _Vincent_?"

The tulip, angry and with a mad face, took the furry animal from my arms to curl it up in his. He modified his expression to a relaxed and affectionate one not usual in him while gently caressing…  _Vincent_.

"T-That rabbit is yours?" I asked, resisting the urge to mock the tulip.

"Any problem with that, brat?" he gave me a defiant look, I shook my head frantically. "Why did you have it?"

"I… I have just found it in the landing and… the door w-was open…"

"I have told Emma million times" he said ore to himself that to me, "make sure the door is well closed before leaving…" he squeezed the animal in his arms and rubbed his face against it. "How soft you are…!"

I thought, without a doubt, that the tulip had smoked more than tobacco. I left before there was a new twist in his head and resumed his sulky attitude.

" _FRATELLO!_  I found you at last!"

As soon as I set foot on the landing, Feliciano appeared up the stairs and threw himself at my neck, typical of him. The macho potatoes and the macho albino watched us, one serious and the other smiling respectively, from a few steps below.

"What the fuck are you two watching?" I snapped. "Don't you have anything better to do?"

" _Kesese_ … Come on,  _West_ " He patted his brother on the shoulder, "let the little Italians enjoy their brotherly love in peace."

I gave the albino a look of hatred and both brothers disappeared down the stairs.

"Get away from me, idiot." I pushed Feliciano and crossed my arms. "What is this sudden show of affection supposed to be about?"

"Vee~… I have been really happy to meet you. You weren't at home when I returned this morning and I got scared, it was too early for you to get up, because it's Saturday and you sleep a lot on Saturday…"

"Well, last night you didn't care much if I was home or not." I reproached him." You preferred to stay with your friend the potato bastard."

"Don't get angry, fratello, please." He begged with tears in his eyes. "You were late in coming and Luddy was tired and was going to go to bed… and I didn't want to stay alone at home… and… and…"

"Stop! That's enough, Feliciano!" I shouted before he started crying. "I'm not angry…"

"Re-Really?" he was surprised.

When the idiot hung up the phone the night before I was really pissed off, but at that moment I felt pretty good, I don't know if it was because I had slept peacefully and was rested, for the delicious breakfast that Antonio left prepared for me, or for having discovered the weakness of the tulip.

"Really. But listen to me well," I took out my index finger of the reproaches, "next time you are going to spend a night out, in the house of whoever, don't leave a bad scribbled note like last night… send me a fucking message to the mobile so that I know you won't be at home when I arrive! Have you understood me?"

"Yes!"

And then again he threw himself at my neck. Damn limpet boy.

* * *

As usual every Saturday, Antonio went for me to go out, with the difference that he didn't go to my house that night, but came directly to the restaurant. I didn't have to be asked twice, besides I avoided the bus I wanted to go out and have fun. Of course, no alcohol.

As was also being usual, the two idiot friends of the Spanish were waiting for us in the pub when we arrived. Judging by the small amount of glasses on the table, only two and filled, the Frenchman and the albino hadn't been there for long.

"Even if you have a free night, you aren't able to arrive on time to our meetings,  _mon_   _ami_." The Frenchy reproached Antonio, tapping his finger on his left wrist.

"I went to pick up Lovi at work."

"Don't pin the blame on me, bastard. Nobody asked you to come to pick me up."

" _Kesese_ … Our Toño is always so helpful, though not as much as the great me!"

"What kind of services do you provide,  _mon ami_?"

"As if I'm going to tell you!"

"Well… it seems we'll have to ask your beloved Hungarian if we want to know." He said nonchalantly.

"Ask her whatever you want, no doubt she'll tell you about the awesome and good lover that I am."

"That's why she chased you around the house yelling at you and knocked you unconscious with a frying pan?" I asked with malice. Antonio and the Frenchman burst into laughter.

"Shut up kid!" the albino was annoyed. "And now that I remember, tell us what you are up to lately with Van Helsing."

"With whom?"

"Govert's surname isn't Van Helsing!" Antonio laughed. I should have guessed he was talking about the tulip. "It's Van-something, but I don't remember what."

"You shouldn't be the one who doesn't remember." The Frenchman said raising an eyebrow.

"It was a very weird and unpronounceable surname."

"Van Gaal?" the albino asked. It seems that the 'weird and unpronounceable' was not captured by his  _awesome_  ears.

"That was the coach of Barça."

"Van Gogh?"

"He has two ears and lacks sensitivity,  _mon ami_."

"Van der Waals?"

"Stop this meaningless talk now, idiots!" I yelled at them and hit the table, they were annoying me with such nonsense. "And what do you mean, potato bastard? I'm not up to anything with that giant tulip."

"Then why did you come from his house this morning?" the German asked. Antonio, next to him, changed his expression to a very strange one, between sad and curious.

"I went to give his rabbit back to him, it had escaped and I found it in the landing."

"Gov has a rabbit?" the bastard got surprised.

"Yes, a little one, white and soft."

"That unawesome giant looks after such a tender being?"

"Spoke the chicken breeder." The Frenchman said.

"It has to be the only rabbit he has contact with lately,  _kesesese_ …"

" _Honhonhon_ … Oh,  _mon Dieu_ , Gilbert, what are you insinuating?"

"Just what you're thinking,  _kesese_ …"

"Well, let's leave Gilbert's vulgar comments and let's return to the subject, mon petit cher, because you've only half-answered," he Frenchman said, getting closer to me, "you say that you aren't up to anything with the blond tulip-head, but I have seen you arriving together at the building the last two nights…"

"Because he comes in the same bus than me, imbecile." I got angry, why the hell did I have to justify whom I was going to those three? "I wish I didn't meet him, he spends the whole time searching for any detail to annoy me and laugh at me. And what the fuck is all this questioning about?!"

"Well,  _mon ami_ " the Frenchman ignored me and spoke to the bastard, "it seems that you're no longer the only one he hates."

"If at least I knew the reason why he does it," sighed Antonio, "I've always tried to get along with him, I even took him at home when he came from Nederland!"

"You do not know the reason why he hates you?" the albino pointed with a clear gesture of disbelief.

"Don't you think it's enough to have deflowered his sister?"

I spat out my drink and stared the bastard with my eyes wide open due to the surprise. So in the end my suspicions were right and there was something between him and the blonde… Damn, something contracted painfully inside me.

"Fuck, how many years have passed since then? We were in the high school."

"Not to mention all the time you were 'with or without you' after breaking."

"Yeah, we spent a lot of time seeing each other without being a couple and we were about to go out again, but in the end it didn't happen…"

"Because she stopped liking the dark-haired ones to like the blond ones and he started going out with that weapon-loving dwarf." The albino pointed out laughing.

"For whatever it was, the fact is that she and I are nothing more than good friends since then and it's already been several years, Gov could relax a little and stop bearing me malice…"

Knowing that the relationship of the bastard and Emma had been based for so long on simple friendship made the painful pinching of my insides vanish. In fact, it could be said that I was even happy, so happy that I didn't care that Feliciano spent another night at the house of his dear friend, the potato bastard (he had listened to me and sent me a message to the cell phone to tell me).

One moment, that meant that I'd have to spend the night alone at home! Damn, I remembered the noises and creaks that didn't let me sleep the night before and I got nervous…

"Hey, basta… Antonio," I corrected. We were back in the building, in front of the door of his apartment, "could I stay in your house today too?"

Antonio's expression exuded illusion, his smile widened and his response was immediate:

"Of course!"

He grabbed me by the wrist and took me inside with the same emotion that shows a kid with a new toy in his hands.

"Hey, hey, wait." He stopped. "I don't have my pajama here, I should go up…"

"I'll lend you whatever you need."

I used as a pajama an Antonio's T-shirt which was at least a couple of sizes too large for me (the bastard has a very wide back). He preferred to get into bed only in his underpants, red tight boxers… fucking Antonio, he could wear more clothes. I turned around so he couldn't notice the blush on my cheeks.

"Hey, Lovi…"

"W-What?" I asked without looking at him.

"I have always been very interested in that curl you have, how…?"

I didn't hear his question. He rolled that sensitive hair of mine between his fingers and gave it a little tug, which caused me a strange sensation that ran down my spine and made my heart race, as well as overheating me.

I punched him in the stomach that made him let go and he stared at me, surprised by my reaction.

"Do not ever touch me there again!" I said, snorting hard and blushing ten shades of red.

"Ve-Very well." He said fearfully as he rubbed the blow. "I… I'm so sorry…"

I lay on the pillow again, turning my back to the bastard and wishing my heartbeat normalized as soon as possible. He said good night and turned off the light.

I woke up suddenly at noon. I felt a breath on my neck. A muscular, tanned arm was wrapping me in what looked like a hug… the damn bastard was hugging me as if I was a fucking stuffed bear! I squirmed several times trying to get rid of his grip, but he pulled me closer to him so that our bodies brushed. I got hot.

I chose to nudge him and he woke up.

"Mmm… Good morning, Lovi!" he greeted me while stretching. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, until a certain octopus woke me up."

"What?" the idiot hadn't understood me, but I wasn't going to explain it either. "Are you hungry?"

My stomach roared before I could answer. The bastard laughed.

"Me too." He smiled and rubbed his belly. "I'm going to prepare breakfast, today I have something that I'm sure you'll like."

"Churros?" I had liked, I can't deny it.

"No!" he said smiling happily. "Fried pancakes with honey!"

I sat down to the kitchen's table and watched the bastard prepare breakfast, he put a lot of effort into it.

The doorbell rang. I got up and went to open the door so that Antonio wouldn't interrupt his work and we could have breakfast as soon as possible, because I was hungry, fuck. Emma was waiting on the other side of the threshold with a catlike smile draw on her beautiful face.

"Lovino?"

The blonde looked surprised to discover that it was me and not the bastard who welcomed her, but she smiled again and came into, I followed her to the kitchen.

"Oh, Toni, don't tell me you're making fried pancakes with honey, so delicious!"

"Do you want some?"

"You're bad," Emma pouted, "you know they'll go directly to my hips…"

"Come on, girl, don't deprive yourself." He put a pancake in her mouth and laughed. "I know you love them…"

Seeing those two in that close attitude after having discovered that they had a relationship made me feel nervous, why? It didn't make sense and I couldn't understand it, the bastard behaved with her exactly the same as with the rest of the people.

Emma sat in front of me at the table, delighting in the pancake she was eating. The bastard grabbed me from behind, rested his head on my shoulder and put a pancake dripping with honey in front of me.

"Open your mouth and try this, Lovi."

I blushed to the root of my hair, as to not do it!

"I'm not a kid, bastard!" I spat annoyed by such familiarity. "Give me that!"

I took the pancake from his hand and ate it in a single bite, it was delicious. Emma laughed at the scene and the bastard, also laughing, put a platter full of the delicious dish and three coffees on the table and sat next to me.

Among laughter and conversations of different kind, as the possible reasons why a tulip of almost two meters raised a fluffy rabbit, our breakfast was extended until almost lunchtime. Feliciano had to be desperate for not knowing about my whereabouts, so I changed my clothes, thanked Antonio (because I can also be grateful when I want) and left with Emma.

But it wouldn't be the only time that day that the blonde and I would meet, because that same night she and Elizaveta went to dinner at the restaurant.

They sat down to a table near the kitchen, which meant short walks. Obviously, I managed to be the one who served them, not that there were more clients, because it was still quite early.

"But if the two most beautiful girls of the building are here." I greeted them with my best smile.

"What a flatterer you are!" Emma laughed.

"What do you want?"

It was great to have customers like those two girls, who took a quick look at the menu and knew everything they were to order without hesitation, I assumed it was not the first time they visited the restaurant. I served them the drinks and handed the sheet with their orders in the kitchen.

It seemed that my boss saw me unoccupied after that and he sent me to carry a pile of clean plates from the sink to the place that belonged to them. I was doing that task when I passed near the door and heard the voices of the two girls talking, they were commenting something about the  _little slip_  of the Hungarian. I know I shouldn't, but I couldn't help but stand there and listen to their conversation (yes, sometimes I'm a gossip).

"Then you haven't talked to Gilbert yet?"

"No way! That idiot has suddenly become shy and avoids me. And when I manage he pays attention to me, he becomes dumber than usual and asks me loudly if I'm trying to seduce him to have another amazing night of passion. Then I hit him with the frying pan and leave him unconscious." She sighed. "I shouldn't have got carried away, alcohol clouded my mind."

"No, honey, your mind was already cloudy for him, alcohol only led you to do what you were repressing."

I deduced, I think correctly, that Elizaveta was as much in love with the idiot albino as he was with her, but what the hell has she seen in that egomaniac German? He's German! Definitely, the Hungarian is crazy.

The manager passed near me and I pretended carrying the plates to their place and going for the rest. I stopped again next to the door, not because I wanted to keep on spying my two neighbors, but because I heard them saying my name, although I didn't know why.

"Well, Lovino is a lovely boy," Emma said. I blushed, "and I have noticed that lately he gets nervous when I'm around." That was strange, a moment ago I was near her and I didn't feel nervous. "He's so cute…"

"So, do you like him or not?"

"What are you saying? He's a cherub! I won't deny that the boy is cute and nice, but he causes me nothing but tenderness and desire to hug him… as if he were my little brother!"

Fuck, I was disappointed. I thought I might have some chance to conquer Emma and it turns out that she considers me a kind of little brother, fucking hell!

"Then who?" Eli asked. "Antonio maybe?"

I tensed when I heard the name of the bastard and held the plates tightly. There was no response from Emma.

"AGAIN?" the Hungarian got surprised. Again what? The porcelain was beginning to creak in my hands.

"It's been three years since there's absolutely nothing between us, I even had another boyfriend afterwards, you know it, but lately I don't stop thinking that I made a big mistake in leaving him. I think I feel something for him again and…

I would have sworn that my heart stopped for a second. I has just realized…

The plates slipped from my hands and shattered on the floor causing a great rumble throughout the restaurant. I watched the disaster with wide eyes for a few seconds and ran out of there.

It couldn't be. It was impossible. I didn't want to believe it. It was true.

I was… in love with Antonio.


	10. Chasing after an Italian

_Chapter 10: Chasing after an Italian_

 

POV Antonio

 

I was worried and depressed, something unusual in me, but I couldn’t stop thinking the same over and over again and I couldn’t find an answer that would satisfy the doubts I had in my head. If I weren’t as clueless as I am, I’d know perfectly well what I had said or done wrong during the past few days and that was so terribly offensive to Lovi so he was angry to the point of having chosen to avoid me at all costs.

It's not like it was the first time that Lovi got angry with me. Of course not! In fact, I think it was unusual the day I didn't do any stupidity which annoyed him. And he would usually yell at me, insult me or throw himself at my stomach (with either his fists or his head, as if there was a target drawn on my abdomen); and after that unexpected interruption, sometimes painful for me, we would laugh (or rather I'd laugh as he kept on throwing insults at me) and then we would return to our previous conversation or we'd start a new one.

But that was before whatever had happened.

I had to remember exactly what had bothered Lovi, fix it as soon as possible and apologize to him until I lost my voice if necessary, because being ignored by him was killing me. I had never felt such an emptiness inside me. I had to get my friend back no matter what.

It seemed like an eternity, even though it had been only three days since we last saw each other. That was on Sunday.

That day Lovi behaved as usual, he even got angry with me as always (yelling at me and calling me ‘bastard’) for treating him as a child trying he ate a pancake from my hands, he blushed madly, it’s impossible to be cuter! 

We were having breakfast with Emma, who appeared unexpectedly and, now that I think about it, I don’t have a clue about the reason of her visit. Whatever, our breakfast extended until lunch time. I was going to invite them for lunch, but before doing it, they decided to leave: Emma because she had things to do, and Lovi because, according to him, his brother would be desperate for not knowing about his whereabouts; no doubt Lovi, although he complaints a lot of Feliciano, worries so much for him, he’s a good older brother!

I said goodbye to my two friends, who left together, and got prepared for a new afternoon of work as an entertainer in the mall (I’d be busy every afternoon of the next week with that job). I would have liked to go out and have a drink with Lovi when I returned, but I knew by that time he would be working at the restaurant. A pity, I had no choice but to wait for the next day.

However, despite my desire to spend some time with him, on Monday we couldn’t see each other either. Before getting dark, just a while after I finished my long day at work, I went up to his house to go out, but contrary to what normally happened, I wasn’t greeted by Lovi’s moody face, but by the smiling Feliciano.

“Hello, Lo…!” I was surprised when I saw that it wasn’t who I expected and rectified. “Hello, Feli~! I’m looking for Lovi, could you tell him to come out?”

“Veeee~” he stared me for some seconds before answer. “ _Ciao_ , Antonio. My _fratello_ … is not at home.”

“He isn’t here?” I surprised, Lovi didn’t use to go out alone. “Where has he gone?”

“Veee~…” he was thinking. “Well… I don’t know!”

“Don’t you know?” he shook his head nervously. “Didn’t he tell you?” he shook his head again. “And you didn’t ask him?”

“Vee~… you know how my fratello is, he gets angry when you bombard him with questions.”

It’s true, Lovi goes on the defensive if he is bombarded with questions as if he was being interrogated.

“Yeah… Then I suppose that you won’t know if he is coming back soon, will you?” he denied again with his head. I sighed a bit resigned. “What a pity!”

“Do you want to leave him a message?”

“No, it’s not necessary, just tell him I have been here.”

Feli said goodbye to me smiling and waving his hand and he closed the door when I turned my back to him. The moment I put my foot on the first step of the stairs, I thought I heard Lovi’s voice coming from inside his house, but I didn’t give importance, I was so eager to see him that I would be imagining it.

To my regret the situation on Tuesday was similar. I may have been more than tired after my exhausting and long working day, but I really wanted to spend some time with my dear Italian friend, so I went up to his house to look for him. I guessed he was there, just a few minutes before I had heard the melody he played with the violin through the patio window. However, when I knocked on his door and after waiting several minutes, I was received by the smiling Feliciano.

“Hello, Feli! And your brother? Could you tell him to come here?”

“Vee~… Veee~…” he sounded nervous and he looked at me and inside the house alternatively.” My… my _fratello_ … vee~… my _fratello_ is not here.”

“How’s that?” I felt a bit out of place. “I have heard him playing violin just a moment ago.”

“Veee… yes, well…” it seemed he was thinking about what to say. “Actually he is here…”

“Then tell him to come!” I urged him.

“He can’t!” he replied, I looked at him inquisitively. “He… he… he just went to bed!”

“So early?” I asked incredulously.

“He wasn’t feeling well!” he looked more anxious.

“Oh, so can I enter to see him? If he’s sick maybe I can stay to help you out…”

“N-N-N-No!” he stretched his arms forward and move them sideways so I couldn’t enter. “My fratello has said he doesn’t want anyone to bother him and you know how he is, ve! I don’t want him to get angry!”

And, without giving me time to say anything else, he closed the door in my face.

I was a bit taken aback by that strange attitude that Feliciano showed, not that I wanted to distrust his words, but his nervousness made me think he was trying to hide something, but I didn’t know exactly what.

As soon as I got home, I lay on the bed. I stared at the ceiling, just on the other side of it, barely a couple of meters above me, was Lovi’s room, where supposedly he was lying sick. I sighed, I felt bad because I couldn’t do anything for him, or could I?

I turned my head towards the window, my guitar rested just below. I picked it up and settled into bed with it. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and sent Lovi a message of encouragement that I’d accompany with a song of my guitar, a soft one to help him feel better.

Since I didn’t get any response after putting my idea into practice, I didn’t know if it worked or not, so I felt a bit disappointed. I suppose that deep down I expected to hear Lovi stamping on the floor so I stopped playing or complaining through the window or, at best, answering to the message. But nothing. I contented myself thinking he was asleep and that maybe my music would have helped him to have sweet dreams.

The next day, Wednesday, I decided to pay a visit to Lovi after lunch to know if he was feeling better. I left my apartment ready to go up when I saw somebody carrying a black case at the end of the flight of stairs, it seemed Lovi who was returning from class (although a bit late). I called him and he turned around, it really was him.

He looked at me for some seconds, with a scared face, and ran as if he was fleeing from me. I ran after him without understanding the reason of his reaction, but he was very fast and entered his house before I could reach him. I knocked on his door repeatedly, almost desperately, but neither of the brothers opened it.

That was the moment I noticed something happened: it wasn’t that Lovi wasn’t at home or felt sick the times I went to see him, it was that he didn’t want to see me, he was avoiding me. But… why? It didn’t make sense that his attitude towards me had changed suddenly, there had to be a reason for Lovi to decide to act as he was doing, which made me conclude that I did or said something that offended him in such a way that he preferred to get away from me.

Throughout the afternoon I tried to think about the possible actions or words that could have bothered Lovi, but being in charge of the entertainment of twenty or more children doesn’t allow many ramblings, so all my attempts to remember were in vain. I felt frustrated and disappointed with myself for being unable to focus and get something clear.

I came back home crestfallen and with my mind immersed in my thoughts, looking for a possible reason to justify Lovi’s detachment. I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn’t notice where I was going and ended up crashing into someone much bigger and stronger than me who made me fall to the ground on my back. I looked up, I was in next to the building’s gate with Ludwig and Feliciano in front of me. No doubt I had collided with the German, who offered his hand to me to stand up.

“Are you ok, Antonio?” Ludwig asked me when I stood up.

“Yeah, sure.” I shook off my clothes. “It was nothing.”

“Vee~… Are you sure, Antonio? You don’t look good…

“Yes, I’m fine, Feli.” I said trying to smile at them, althought my mood didn’t let me. But, one moment! Feliciano was there in front of me, it could be possible that he knew what had bothered Lovi. I threw myself into his arms. “FELI!”

“Vee!” he shouted scared. “W-What happens?”

“And your brother? What is happening to him?” I asked almost desperately, moving a little away from him, but still holding him by his shoulders. He looked scared. “You know? Tell me you know!”

“Veee!” with his eyes full of tears, he shook his head. Ludwig made me move away. “I… I don’t know.”

“Don’t you know?” I got depressed again. “Then you won’t know why he’s avoiding me, right?”

“Did you realize?” he asked surprised.

“That’s why you behaved so strangely when I went to your house to look for Lovi.”

“I’m sorry… My _fratello_ asked me to cover him when you came home, although I don’t know why. He… He has been behaving strange for several days, don’t tell me what’s happening to him and… he gets ve-very angry if I ask him.

“I see.” I answered sadly.

“One moment,” Ludwig said, “are you saying that Lovino is avoiding you” he pointed at me, “but he didn’t want you to realize and still you have noticed?”

Sadly, I nodded. Ludwig stood with his mouth wide open for a few seconds and looked up at the sky. Feliciano and I looked up too, we had no idea what the German was searching for in the heights.

“Is it going to snow tonight?” I didn’t understand why he had asked that, sometimes Ludwig is incomprehensible to me.

“Vee~… How is it going to snow, Luddy? It’s summer and it’s very hot. We’re not in Germany, it doesn’t snow here.”

“No, I didn’t mean…” he stared at us for some seconds and shook his head. “Bah! Never mind, let’s leave it. It’s about time to go, Feliciano.

“Yes, it’s true, it’s getting late.” Feli held Ludwig’s arm again. “We are going to the cinema to watch a ninjas’ movie, do you want to come, Antonio?”

Ludwig paled and his expression became more serious than it normally was.

“Thank you very much, Feli, but I don’t feel like it. Have fun.”

Ludwig relaxed his face, smiled a bit (because the corners of his lips rose a few millimeters, otherwise it wouldn’t have been noticed) and patted me on my back as a goodbye.

Unfortunately, the conversation with Feliciano had only depressed me more. If he didn’t even know what happened to Lovi and he was avoiding me, how could I find out what had happened and make amends? I decided to try my luck going to his house once more.

I don’t know how long I spent on the landing or the times I knocked on his door, but my fingers ended up in pain. I tried to phone, Lovi’s mobile tone was heard on the other side of the door the first two times, and there was no signal at the third call, he would have turned it off. 

I went down to my apartment frustrated, disappointed and, above all, depressed.

I fell onto the bed and buried my face in the pillow, which, to my complete surprise, still retained the smell of Lovino. I breathed in that aroma, remembering the two nights I spent in his company.

When he appeared in the middle of the night asking me for letting him sleep at my home, I don’t know what I thought, he seemed scared and shy, but he looked so cute… Just like in the morning! He was so calm while he was sleeping that I couldn’t repress the desire to kiss his rosy cheeks… Maybe he noticed and that’s why he got angry! No, even if it was a possibility, if Lovi had realized at the moment he wouldn’t have repressed beating me, just like on Saturday night when I touched that funny curl he had, I only wanted to know how he managed to keep it suspended in the air, but got angry and hit me in the stomach… the truth is that his reaction was a bit strange, he looked heated and nervous, he was snorting and his face was redder than usual, he might have gotten angry for that! Although the next morning he behaved as always…

Agh! Thinking about the possible reasons of Lovi’s annoyance and then demolish them by myself had no sense, I was only getting a headache. I rubbed my face to try to clear myself. I sighed deeply and hugged the pillow, inhaling again Lovi’s scent (I missed him a lot!) until I fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

 

I had wanted to see Lovi in the morning, in fact I spent a while sat on the stairs waiting for him to go down to his class, but he didn’t do it. In the end, it was Emma who appeared, a bit surprised by my delay and urged me to leave for work or we would be late.

 On the way, while driving my motorbike with Emma on my back, I remembered that she left my house with Lovino the last day I saw him, maybe she knew something about what was happening to him, because he had told her about it or because she had noticed (girls have a special ability to detect problems). I asked her as soon as we got off the bike.

“Lovino was weird?” she said. “Really? I saw him the same as always, both at your home and at night.

“Did you see Lovi that night?!” I got surprised.

“Yeah. I went to dinner at Romu’s restaurant with Eli when she finished her shift at the hospital. It was Lovino who served us, at least at first, because then there was a row in the kitchens and we didn’t see him again.”

Lovi took his job seriously, I knew it on good authority, we had worked together and he didn’t do it bad, in fact he learnt everything he needed to know quickly and put a lot of effort into doing it well. So that they didn’t see him again was strange enough.

“How’s that there was a row and you didn’t see Lovi anymore?”

“Well, I don’t know what happened, but there was a rumble like dishes breaking on the floor. I imagine that since Lovino was the last to arrive, he had to pick up the disaster and that’s why he didn’t come back out again, at least during the time we were there.”

“Oh, okay.”

Wow, for a moment I thought that in the restaurant there might have happened some event that triggered Lovi’s annoyance towards me.

“Hey, Toni, now that we’re talking about the restaurant, why don’t you and I go there to have dinner tonight? It’s been a long time since we saw each other outside of work.”

“We live in front of the other! We see each other every day.”

“Oh, don’t play dumb!” she grumbled gracefully making a puppy face. “You know what I mean, to spend a little time together and have fun, not to pass each other on the landings. What do you say? Are we going to dinner at Romu’s restaurant tonight?”

Sincerely, I didn’t feel like accepting her proposal, but Emma, with her head cocked, looked at me with those imploring green eyes and an innocent smile on her face. I couldn’t refuse. Moreover, I had a good incentive to accept, it was Thursday and Lovino would be working in the restaurant, which would give me the opportunity to talk to him.

So that evening, after coming back from the mall and having a long, relaxing shower, I went to pick up Emma. Luckily she was who received me, because I wasn’t in the mood to endure the scathing comments of her brother towards me, even so I tried to put my best smile for my friend.

It wasn’t even dark yet. We walked to the garage to get the car or the motorcycle, at least I was heading there, but when I was arriving Emma grabbed my hand and pulled me. I looked at her without understanding, she smiled at me and led me to a square.

“We better go by taxi” she said, “so we won’t have a problem to return if we drink a little.”

“Do you intend me to get drunk?” I raised an eyebrow, looking at her inquisitively.

“You never know.” She stuck out her tongue and winked. Moreover, then we could go back taking a walk…”

I shrugged. Emma interpreted it as a positive answer and giggled softly. She pushed me inside the first parked taxi we found, she sat beside be and started to talk to me, I don’t know about what, really, because I was so deep in my thoughts on how to get Lovi not to avoid me in the restaurant that I wasn’t even listening to her.

“Toni, Toni!” she shook my arm, pulling me out of my absorption. “Where are you? Because it seemed that you weren’t listening to me.”

“Sorry, Emma” I smiled, “I was distracted.”

“What happens?” she looked at me worried. What I said, girls have that ability to detect when something is not right around them. “You don’t look like yourself.”

“I have been a little bad for a few days because something happens with Lovi and I don’t know what it is or how I can fix it.”

“That’s why you asked me about him this morning?” I nodded. “If you have any problem with him maybe we shouldn’t go to dinner to Romu’s restaurant, we can go anywhere else if you want…”

“NO!” I shouted suddenly, I had to go and make Lovi talk to me. Emma startled by my unexpected reaction. “I… I mean there’s no problem, I really want to have dinner there.”

“Ah, fine.” She smiled again.

“Do you know? It’s been a while since last time I went there as a customer” I remembered my last visit and smiled with a bit of nostalgia, “since the day I met Lovi. He asked me to take him to lunch at a genuine Italian restaurant.”

“So demanding!” she laughed.

“Poor boy, he fell down in a faint in my arms… if he ever finds out that I have told you this, he’ll kill me…”

I continued to remember my first encounter with Lovi until we reached our destination, the truth is that talking about him made me feel a bit better. Emma, on the other hand, was becoming more and more quiet and thoughtful.

I wanted to enter at the dining room, in summer there’s much more tranquility inside, but Emma stopped me holding my arm, she preferred to sit at a table on the terrace.

While we were reading the menu, I told Emma about the days Lovi and I were working together and how I had to teach him everything he needed to know and how fast he learnt. Suddenly she left the menu on the table with a slap.

“Do you know what you are going to order?” she asked me sharply, but smiling, though the corners of her lips trembled.

“Eeh… well…”

My gaze went alternately from the menu to Emma a couple of times. Her green, piercing eyes were fixed on me, making me nervous. I looked away and saw that Lovi passed in front of the dining room door, I know it was a few seconds, but our eyes met. No doubt that was the moment to talk to him. I got up from the table very fast, almost without thinking.

“I’m going to the toilet” I lied, “I come back right now.”

And I ran into the restaurant chasing Lovi, who was serving with a gallant smile a table with four young girls who… were making eyes at him! What a cheek… anyway, as soon as Lovino finished taking note, I approached him and grabbed his arm so he couldn’t escape. He squirmed a little trying to get away.

“Lovi, please, we need to talk.” I said in a low voice.

“Don’t you realize that I’m working, bastard?” he kept on moving. “Leave me alone, you idiot, I don’t have time for your bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit!” I was offended.

“I don’t care, I’m not interested!”

He squirmed once more and nudged me in the stomach causing me to let him go and he took the opportunity to disappear into the kitchen. Chasing him would be useless and would only bother everyone who was working there, so I snorted in frustration and went out onto the terrace.

To my utter surprise, Emma was no longer sitting at the table, she was going out to the street at a swift pace. I ran after her, I didn’t understand why she was leaving so suddenly, if it was her idea to go to dinner. I held her by her wrist when I reached her and she stopped, turning to me with an angry face.

“Emma, what happens? Why have you left so suddenly?”

“What do you think?” she snapped back at me.  

She got free of my grip violently. She stopped a taxi which was approaching and left, leaving me there with no explanation.

I sighted deeply and made my way back home on foot.

 I definitely didn’t understand anything about what was happening. First Lovino pulled me away from his life suddenly and for no apparent reason, and then Emma got mad at me who knows why. What a horrible week! I felt more and more depressed.

When finally after forty five minutes I arrived at the building’s gate, Francis and Gilbert were leaving and stopped me. I didn’t have to tell them anything to let them know that I felt really bad emotionally, they realized when they saw me, especially Francis, who has always had that ability. Both of them grabbed me by the arms, stopping me from continuing my way to the second floor and dragged me to a nearby bar.

“Now, _mon ami_ , you’re going to tell us why you’re depressed.” Fran said to me when served us drinks and a couple of tapas (because I hadn’t eaten yet).

I explained in detail what happened during the last days and what had happened in the restaurant. Gilbert and Francis listened to me with all their attention and without interrupting me, which was a novelty, as they always find something to comment on. In fact, they didn’t speak for a while after I finished, they stared at me with astonished faces.

“My, my, you can tell the _le petit italien_ made a deep impression on you, _mon amour_.”

“What do you mean, Fran?”

“What does he mean? Is it not clear enough? If you have even left the blondie behind to get that kid’s attention, and in its day you drooled and whined for her.”

“ _C’est vrai_ , you weren’t like that for anyone since Emma and you stopped ‘not going out’ together.”

“Eh?”

“Let’s see, Toño, haven’t you thought that maybe the little boy has gotten angry with you not for something you have done but for what you haven’t done yet?”

“Guys! Please, speak clearly because I’m more lost than the rice boat.”

“What Gilbert says is that maybe _le petit italien_ has gotten angry with you for being so slow and not having declared to him yet.”

“Declaring to him? And why the hell should I declare to him?”

“Maybe because of your feeling for him?”

“Friendship?” I asked hesitantly. “Do I have to declare my friendship to Lovi?”

“Friendship? Come on, Toño, if you can tell it a mile away that you have a big desire for that kid. Do yourself and that grumpy boy a damn favor and give an amazing cock once and for all, he sure is also looking forward to it.

“Fuck, Gilbo! What obsession you do have with chickens… Auch!”

Francis had slapped me on the back of my neck, painfully indeed. Gilbert received one too. Francis sighed deeply.

“To begin with, Gilbert, stop making vulgar comments and giving absurd advice that is useless.”

“What do you say about my advice?” he was offended. “They are some amazing tips.”

“Yeah, amazingly useless. I’ve already seen how well what you said worked with your beloved doctor, now you run away from her every time she approaches you.”

“Because lately she has her murderous instinct at exorbitant levels and I don’t want her to split my head with her frying pan.”

“You didn’t care about that before. Be a man, confront her and make it clear your feeling for her!” Francis stood up in excitement. “And you, Antonio” he pointed at me and sat down again, patting me on the shoulder, “ _mon amour_ , how slow you can be sometimes, don’t you realize that what you feel for _le petit italien_ isn’t a simple friendship?”

“Is it not?”

“Of course not, Toño” Gilbert said, “you haven’t seen him for less than a week and it seems that your vital regions had been removed.”

“Not to mention how you behave with him, always so helpful and attentive and above all…” Fran paused for a moment and smirked… “protective…”

I looked at him, intrigued by the tone which he had said that last word.

“Don’t look at me like that, _cher_ , you know well what I mean. It’s enough that someone comes closer to your beloved Lovino so that you are on the alert.”

“ _Kesese_ … with that ‘someone’ you mean yourself, really, Frenchy?” Fran laughed.

“Moreover, if he is present in the same place where you are, you don’t separate from him. Like the night of my party, you didn’t move away more than a meter from him…”

“That was the condition Lovi put to accompany me to the party, so I didn’t leave him alone.”

“So he only went to the party because you asked him.” He exchanged a glance with Gilbert and they both nodded with conviction. “Interesting…”

“Well, to be honest, Fran, Lovi doesn’t trust you, he thinks you are going to jump on him or something like that at the first chance.”

“I’ll gladly do it.”

I looked at him badly, the lascivious tone he used to say that phrase made me angry, it seemed that he meant it and, no matter how good friend of mine Francis was, I would never allow him to use Lovi for his amusement.

“See how I’ve got reason, _amour_?” he said calmly. “You are on the alert. Calm down, I was joking.” He winked.

“I don’t like that kind of jokes.” I said seriously.

“Whatever, _mon ami_ , don’t dismiss the chance that Lovino has been angry with you for your slowness, because he may have misunderstood certain aspects of your behavior. So what you have to do now is to think over everything we have said to you, analyze your own reactions and realize what you really feel for _le petit italien_.”

“And assume it!”

Far from helping me solve my problems, the conversation with the guys only managed to confuse me even more. Why did they insist on questioning my friendship with Lovino? Although perhaps they were right in saying that what I felt was not a simple friendship, it was something stronger, I had become very fond of him! It was impossible not to do it: he’s a smart and funny boy –I never get bored while being with him– but also vulnerable and insecure, who cares for those who matter to him, but who hides himself behind a barrier of hostility so he is not gotten hurt. How could I not be fond of someone so adorable?

And now that adorable person was leaving me aside, why? The guys raised the possibility that Lovi had been angry at my slowness in not declaring to him… Were they insinuating that Lovi felt something more than friendship for me? No, that was impossible…

Although, on second thought, there was an incident at Francis’ party that might well suggest the opposite. Lovi, totally drunk, and I were dancing when suddenly he felt very hot and went to the landing taking off his shirt. I ran after him and, seeing his condition, I grabbed him by the waist and forced him to go to his house, he refused and repeated over and over again that he wanted to dance. We went up the first flight of stair with difficulty, because Lovi didn’t stop moving and dancing. Then he grabbed my abdomen and ran his hands over it, saying that “he was going to do me something that nobody else had ever done me before”, I’d swear that my face lit up when he said that, but suddenly I felt a lot of tickling, of course, he meant that! Or that I wanted to think, I’d ask him the next day. But it turned out that Lovi didn’t remember anything and when I told him what he told me, he became completely white and his face was distorted. I felt so bad to see him like that, so I decided to lie to him saying that he was referring to a musical work and the first one that came to mind was that famous of the seasons, that seemed to relieve him. And I forgot about the subject, until that moment.

Oh, God! Could it be that Francis and Gilbert were right with that they implied about Lovi? No, definitely not, Lovi was as drunk as a lord that night and he wasn’t aware of what he was doing or saying. But… it was possible that Lovino had remembered what happened that night and knew that I had lied to him and… that was the reason of his anger! Yes, that explanation was much more plausible than the one exposed by my friends.

 

* * *

 

On Friday morning, I woke up tired and with an incipient stomachache, facing so many negative events in so few days was taking a toll on me.

I was just in time to get to work, I dressed quickly, drank a cup of hot coffee and went to look for Emma, but I was welcomed by Govert with that sympathy that characterizes him.

“I don’t know what you are doing here, but you are annoying, so you can leave now.”

“B-But I come for Emma to go to work.”

“Emma left half an hour ago, she must have finally gotten tired of waiting for a good-for-nothing lie you every morning.”

He shut the door in my face.

There was no doubt that Emma was still angry and she had preferred to leave alone to work, but at least I could see her there and apologize for what had bothered her. Or so I intended, because I couldn’t find her all morning and I looked for her throughout the store, but nothing, I didn’t find her. And I didn’t see her at the time of leaving, so I returned home alone.

“Antonio!” an authoritative voice shouted as soon as I set foot in the patio.

Roderich suddenly appeared leaving Elizaveta’s house (it was quite a surprise because until a few weeks ago he used me as a messenger to send letters to his ex-girlfriend). He approached me with an angry face, and what had I done?

“What the hell is happening with Lovino?” I looked at him without understanding. “He skipped my classes and I have come to look for him.”

“How long did it take you to come?” he glanced at me, Roderich gets annoyed every time I refer to his null sense of direction.

“Less than you imagine, I’ve been here for a while. I tried to see Lovino, but he didn’t open the door.”

“Welcome to the club.”

Since it was you who insisted that I accepted him as a student, I demand a good explanation to justify this intolerable lack of discipline.”

“Rod, it’s been at least five days since Lovino doesn’t want to know anything about me and I don’t even know why, what makes you think that I can know the reasons why he has skipped your classes? Ask Feliciano, luckily he may know something.”

“Do you mean that boy who is in Elizaveta’s house and can’t stop crying because his brother doesn’t let him into the house?”

“WHAT?!”

I went into my friend’s house. Feliciano was on a couch crying while Eli was trying to calm him down unsuccessfully. On another sofa, Gilbert lay unconscious and with a bump on his forehead, he would surely have won a frying pan blow from Eli, who knows why. I approached Feli and bent over in front of him.

“Feli, what happened? Why are you crying?”

“Vee~… My… my… my _fratello_ …” he sobbed. “Vee~…i-is… an-angry and doe…doesn’t let… let me en-enter… home…”

“What? Why?”

“Didn’t you hear about last night’s mess, Antonio?” Eli asked. I shook my head, I was so tired that I lay on the bed and didn’t hear anything. “Well, the row wasn’t small precisely.”

“Your beloved Lovinito showed up at my awesome abode looking for Feliciano, who had stayed to sleep there, but Feliciano refused to leave and they had an argument. That’s the short version of the story.” Gilbert said, sitting up while rubbing his bump. “Damn Hungarian, you’re going to make me stupid with your blows.”

“You are” Eli answered, “learn how to behave and you won’t receive more.”

“I have no reason to behave with that stupid aristocrat.”

Roderich and Gilbert exchanged hateful looks. Eli raised the pan so it could be seen by both of them. Gil grunted and leaned back on the couch, crossing his arms.

“But let’s see” I said, taking up the subject, “other times you have stayed at Gil and Ludwig’s house, why does Lovi get angry now to the point of not letting you enter the house?”

“Vee~… Because… because I told him that I preferred stay with Ludwig than leaving with him.” Feliciano answered calmer.

“And considering that horrible dislike Lovino has for German people, that had to suit him like a hole in the head.” Roderich commented.

“Fuck, if I even let him be friend of my awesome self, where does so much hatred come?”

“Vee~… That’s my fault…”

The looks of all of us instantly turned to Feliciano.

“What?”

“Vee~… When we were little we had a very serious German neighbor of who we were afraid and one day my fratello went into his garden to catch a ball that had fallen unintentionally, but that man discovered him and got angry and took my fratello with my mamma, who scolded him very hard. From then on he began to detest everything related to the German…”

“But that’s not your fault, Feli.” Eli said while caressing Feli’s head.

“In fact, it’s time for Lovino to get over those traumas.” Roderich commented coldly. “Anyway, I’ve already accomplished what I came to do, so I’m leaving.”

“Do you want me to accompany you?” Eli offered.

“NO!” shouted a blushed Gilbert.

For doing both Gilbert and Roderich a favor, I decided to be the one to accompany the latter to his house, which only left me time to have lunch before going back to work. But I had already decided, that afternoon I would talk to Emma about her anger and I would clarify with Lovino the reasons of his avoiding, whether he wanted to or not.

Fortune seemed to smile up on me for the first time in that week. I decided to solve first the issue with Emma, I had the feeling that I would solve it in a short time. So just after returning, I knocked on her door. This time she welcomed me.

“Emma, great!” I smiled at her, I hoped she didn’t throw me out as her brother. “Hey, I have been wanting to see you all day to apologize for…”

“No, Toni” she interrupted me seriously. No? No what? “You don’t have to ask for my forgiveness for anything, it’s me who has to apologize to you.” Well, I didn’t understand anything. “I didn’t have to get angry or react as I did, I know, there’s no justification for it, but I’m not going to deny that I was very shocked to discover how you are for Lovino.”

“What? I don’t understand, what do you mean by ‘how I am for Lovino’?”

“Please, Toni, isn’t it obvious?” she said frowning. “You’re crazy for that boy.”

“Come on, Emma, are you going to begin with that like Gilbert and Francis?”

Emma joined her index and middle fingers together, put them in front of my face and quickly directed them to my forehead, hitting it with their fingertips. It hurt. Whenever she wanted to make me notice something, she used that strategy.

“Auch, it hurts!” I rubbed the spot hit.

“Antonio!” Emma only called me by my full name when she got angry. “Don’t you see yourself?!

I didn’t know what to answer to that question, so I shrugged. I won a new blow with her fingers on my forehead.

“How you act, how you talk about him, how you miss him, don’t you realize? Your whole world revolves around Lovino. You are in love with him!”

I was speechless for a few seconds. I… was I in love with Lovino? That was what Fran and Gil meant when they tried to convince me again and again that what I felt for him was more than just friendship? Yes, they were definitely right, it was not just friendship. And it wasn’t a simple fondness as I had thought, it was something even stronger, more intense, deeper, I needed him with my whole soul and I wanted him with all my heart.

Emma was right, I was in love with Lovino.

I held my friend in my arms, if it wasn’t for her and her direct way of telling me things, it would have taken me a lot longer to realize what I really felt for Lovi (guys were absolutely right saying that I am slow).

I only had to solve the problem with Lovino. I had to talk to him and know once and for all the reasons that had led him to decide to grow apart from me by avoiding me, and solving it in any way, I didn’t care, the only thing I wanted at that time was to have my Lovi close to me again.

By the hour it was, he had to be in the restaurant, but it turned out that no. I was still hugging Emma when he passed behind me at full speed towards the stairs, saying a brief “good evening” that made us separate. My heart beat so fast, Lovi had spoken to me again, even though he hadn’t stopped. I looked at Emma with excitement, she smiled shyly and nodded, closing the door.

Without thinking about it any longer, I ran after Lovino. He was one step ahead of me. I called him several times to stop him, but he chose to run. I lost sight of him a couple of times, but luck was on my side and I managed to keep track of him until reaching a small nearby beach.

I saw him sitting on the sand contemplating the sea while the sunset sun illuminated his face. I approached him slowly so he wouldn’t notice my presence and flee again. I sat next to him while taking his arm gently, but firmly, and I gave him a wide smile.

“This time I won’t let you escape.”


End file.
